States set insurance rates.
Every state is raising the state cost on insurance for business owners, in particular small business owners who own commercial property. Throughout the US, rates are increasing by 50-100% by January 1st.
Insurance agents are on the phones daily with their clients telling them that their rates are going up to those amounts, which will bankrupt everyone from a hotel owner who owns the property that a Holiday Inn sits on, to a child daycare. ON the other end of the phone lines are business owners sobbing, knowing that their company is finished.
Friends of mine are business owners in Michigan and New York, and their insurance is going up from 30K to 80K per year. Yes, that's sometimes an over 100% increase. They’re being told that even other insurance companies are doing the same, so the business of “shopping around” for other insurance rates is next to impossible, regardless of how good your track record is. If you’ve never filed a claim, your rates are still going up. It’s much like a car owner who is insured and never gets in a car accident. Your rates will still go up over time, even with the best driving record on the planet. The problem is, car insurance isn’t even close to property insurance and that is a bubble that won’t only burst, it will never re-inflate.
If you thought that people’s businesses closing for the COVID lie was bad, buckle up. With less people around from the Bioweapon, and companies needing to stay afloat, their orders are to raise the rates, and if owners decide to sell, who are they going to sell to exactly? You guessed it. BlackRock.
The same is true for farmland. Farmers are dumping land by the hundreds of acres, because they can't afford the higher taxes. The buyers? Well, you know who.
This is what happens when there are less people around. The rates are set by government in an attempt to make up for the difference. Only this time the difference isn't coming back.
It’s about to get way worse in 2024.
Alright, I'll play devil's advocate. This isn't entirely true. I won't be rude as I usually am, because I can see how someone would look around and see something like this, but it's just not true. ESPECIALLY, on the farmland side of things.
First of all. let's address the fact that there are two separate issues being discussed here, insurance rates and taxes.
Let's talk about Insurance rates first. Yes, they're going up. The rates you're giving though, are only applicable to inner city crap holes. Those rates are reflective more on urban crime policies than anything else. You mentioned Michigan and New York Specifically. Both states have went on a spree of decriminalizing all kinds of crap up to a certain dollar amount, and have also made it next to impossible to actual prosecute any criminals in inner cities.
This is why those rates are increasing by a ridiculous rate in such places. Now you mentioned hotels. So let's go for a hotel in say, downtown Manhattan or Long Island, since we're still talking New York/New York Metro in that case.
The rates on such buildings in those areas aren't going up anywhere near as much, despite the recent influx of "immigrant trouble". Why? Because they're high value buildings in gateway markets. Even if you completely trashed the building to the point that it's no longer suitable for human habitation, the land it sits on is so valuable that, if you demolished the building, you could probably make your money back and then some on the sell of the land and air rights (which is is a thing in new york, you can buy and sell the rights to the air above the land parcels you own), so the insurance won't increase by THAT much, because they know that if push come to shove, that land is still going to be of value.
Detroit doesn't have that luxury, since it's a complete crap hole without a single positive market appeal. It's a dying city and has been for decades. So you can get away with jacking up insurance rates.
Likewise, while rates ARE increasing, they're not increasing by the ridiculous amounts you pointed out everywhere. Take Florida for example. Hotel central. Yes, the rates have increased in Florida, but the most I've seen over the past 3-4 years is 20%, or roughly 5% a year. Hardly the 50-100% you're talking about. It's annoying, but hardly an amount that can't be absorbed into the cost and passed on to customers. And let's be honest, people who want to go to miami beach are gonna pay that cost and never blink an eye about it.
Here's the other thing about insurance specifically that you don't seem to understand. Commerical insurance is much different from personal insurance. Typically, you sign commercial insurance contracts in terms of 10-20 years, and then the insuree has at least 2, but usually up to 4 two-five year extensions on that contract.
Commerical insurance is a long game. They want to lock in those big money customers for decades at a time. The extensions ARE often negotiable, but typically speaking, what you're describing of "insurance shopping" being impossible is completely false when it comes to commercial insurance. There are literally entire teams out there that are dedicated to poaching insurance customers from one firm to another by offering them the absolute lowest possible rates they can offer once they've been pissed off because their current provider tried to squeeze them.
Insurance companies are a rather unique entity. They really and truly, don't have to pay out that many claims throughout a year. Sometimes that's because there aren't that many claims and other times it's legal shenanigans, but either way, the point is they don't have to pay out too many claims, because large scale disasters are actually pretty rare in the grand scheme of things.
This puts them in the unique position of being able to collect your payments or "the float" and not have to pay out for years at a time. Which allows them to invest your payments for years, decades even, without ever having to pay anything out, and make more money for themselves. So it's more beneficial for them to have a long term contract with a large scale client, than to try and squeeze as much as they can out of that same client and run them into the arms of a rival provider who will offer them better terms for a 10+Year contract.
Now that we've established that the insurance side of things is only true in crap hole ghetto inner cities, let's address the taxes.
I'll just be honest, you have no idea what you're talking about here. 99% of farmers in the United States are eligible for what is called an "Agriculture/Homestead (depending on where you live) exemption". Basically, it freezes your property taxes permanently at a lower rate so long as the land is being used for agricultural purposes. It doesn't matter what happens around them, development, lots of house sells, etc. etc. Their taxes stay as low as possible so long as they keep farming. And any land they add to their farm's portfolio (because farms are registered as a business in 99% of cases) instantly have that super low tax rate applied to them.
Likewise, farmers have other special tax exemptions and rules. For example, you've heard everything is deductible as a joke before right? Well in the case of farmers, literally everything IS deductible. Everything from their electricity bill, to grocery bills, wages for workers, fuel for any vehicle registered as "company property" regardless of actual use, what little property taxes you pay, animal rearing and crop rearing costs, etc. etc.
Literally everything you do that has some effect on the farm is deductible. In 90% of cases, farmers don't actually pay taxes. By the time they end up claiming all of their deductions, they pay no taxes at all. This is why people say farmers are the most heavily subsidized business sector in North America. Not because of actual subsidy payments (though those ARE a factor), but because they get such favorable tax treatment compared to everybody else that only the absolute largest of farms (King Ranch, Three Mile Canyon Farms, etc.) actually end up paying any kind of taxes. And even then it's usually only a small amount.
Likewise, Insurance on farms is ALSO set up in decade long contracts, with 5 year extensions. Mostly because the assumption is that the farm is going to continue for generations as the farm is passed from Father to son again and again, and food production is the single most stable and needed industry on the planet.
And finally, this "there's less people" theory is also wrong. So far, there's been 20 Million excess deaths globally over the past few years. I know that sounds like a lot, and it is, but when you're talking about a global population of nearly 8 BILLION, that number starts to be much smaller. I can tell you right now, you go to ANY tourist trap in the USA right now, and it'll be just as crowded as any other year, despite all the financial problems people are experiencing.
Why? Because people are stupid. They'll prioritize short term joy over long term 90% of the time. This is why the beaches are full (and therefore the hotels and other small businesses). This is why Vegas is cram packed. This is why you still see people on long island vacationing and the golden coast in chicago, etc. etc.
So yeah, Insurance IS going up, but it's not having the effect you seem to think it is. Besides even assuming the $80K number WAS true universally, most medium sized businesses, like the Holiday Inn you mentioned, could easily absorb that cost. Medium sized hotels, in decent spots will make several $100K a year minimum. In GOOD spots? Easily over $1 Million a year. So yeah, it's not right that they'd have to absorb that extra cost, but they easily could.
This isn't going to bankrupt as many people as you think it is. If it does, then I hate to say it, but they're either in bad location for business and need to move their business anyway, or they're bad at being a businessman and probably took on too much debt, so they were bound to fail anyway.
Brutal, but honest.
Well, that was nice.
Problem is, the vast majority of Americans don't own hotels on Miami Beach and aren't millionaires.
Now you see how the insurance game can collapse Americans. It's designed to collapse the majority who aren't millionaires, not collapse the minority who might be millionaires.
In your original post you specifically mentioned Hotel owners and business owner friends as part of your examples, ergo, I was pointing out the flaw in your logic of applying commercial insurance rates to normal insurance rates.
So obviously you either forgot what you wrote or you only skimmed my post.
Normal insurance rates ARE going up for normal people. But nowhere near as much as you let on. For example, in the area I live (semi-rural area with a few principle cities and a metro population of over a million), our insurance has gone up a whopping $20 over the past 3 years. So a little less than $7 a year.
But we also don't have stupid high crime rates, and our district attorneys will actually prosecute criminals. Change the location to, since you were using MIchigan and New York as examples, Detroit, and yes you'll obviously see a lot higher increases because Detroit is always in the top 10 most crime ridden cities in North America, and has gotten worse since Michigan decriminalized basically everything up to a certain dollar amount of damage while refusing to prosecute any crimes.
This is why blue state cities are seeing exoduses.
So no, most people aren't millionaires, as you snarkily pointed out, but most people in the us ALSO don't live in a city. The USA is still very rural/suburban in terms of population spread.
Meaning the majority of people don't live in an area where insurance rates are going sky high because of retarded policies. They WILL see increases, some larger than others (not everyone is going to experience the $20 increase I have for example), but most aren't going to be bankrupted by it either.
Though I will admit the notable exception is california, because their state level politicians have screwed things up so bad that now most insurance companies have just opted to outright pull out of the state and won't renew policies after their current cycle.
But there again, that's not really bankrupting people, because instead of having "high insurance" payments, they have NO insurance payments. Which is also bad, but not a problem that will immediately lead to being bankrupt.
Ohio has 88 counties.
44 of those counties this upcoming tax year are having their property taxes (that's all properties, residential and commercial) increase by 37-41%.
So yes. Farmers are selling if there are people to buy it.
The major buyer is BlackRock and their subsidiaries.
Funny how you didn't deny anything I said in my rebuttal about your application of insurance logic and instead changed the topic to the farm part of things to try and get a win. But I'll bite.
First of all let's address the blatantly wrong Ohio Tax situation. I found not a single source stating that literally half of Ohio counties are going to see 37-44% tax increases on their property taxes. In fact, the ONLY thing I found was that 6 counties have seen an AVERAGE HOME VALUE INCREASE, of that amount.
https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/counties-caution-property-taxes-are-rising-because-of-hot-real-estate-market-but-not-as-much-as-you-think
And even the article points out, that doesn't mean a 37-41% increase in TAXES. If you read it, it'll point out that taxes are only increasing by an average of 9% as a result of the massive increase in home value. Market value and tax assessed value are two different things, and the massive increase is MARKET VALUE. Tax Assessed Value is ALWAYS lower than Market value. Hence, taxes, in 6, not 44, of Ohio's counties are increasing my an average of 9%.
Granted, that's still not right, but an extra $600~ a year (as pointed out in the charts in the article) is hardly bankrupting for most people .
Now let's move on to your falsehoods about the farmers.
No, no they aren't. Farmer's aren't selling out, and blackrock is most definitely NOT the "major buyer" of such land.
96% of all farms in the united states are family owned.
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/archive/2021/01-22-2021.php
Even if you go off the admitted decrease of 4% since 2012 (this is the most up to date USDA data since it's from 2021 and they do it in ten year cycles), that's .0044% decrease per year.
But even THEN, that doesn't account for the fact that in 9 out of ten cases, the farms being sold, are bought up by another nearby farmer to add to their fields. Farmer's are typically VERY close knitt and will mostly sell to another nearby farmer if they are going to close up shop because none of the kids want to get involved.
So most of those "decreases" are just local famers condensing ownership among themselves as some retire and don't have kids that want to be part of the farm life.
And finally blackrock. I WAS going to pull up a statistic to show that it's a lie that they are buying up farmland, but guess what. When I tried searching for such a statistic, I couldn't find one.
Because there isn't one. Blackrock hasn't bought ANY farmland in the United States. They only countries I've found they've bought agricultural land in are Ukraine (big surprise) and Australia (Also big surprise). Blackrock's North American Funds are focused on upstream and downstream Agricultural products instead of farms.
So things like Fertilizer, farm equipment, meat packing, processed products (like canned vegetables, juices, etc. etc.) They have literally zero direct investments in Agricultural land in North America. I even tried looking to see if they own shares in any of the few Agricultural REITS (which are few and far between because they're just not popular and only own a few 10K acers at most of the nearly Billion acres of Agricultural land in United States alone).
Nope, they don't even seem to own any shares in Agricultural REITs.
At this point, you're just making up blatant alarmism lies because you can't be bothered to control+F through a quarterly fund report on Blackrock's website.
So please, stop arguing over something that's just blatantly not true. You're not helping anyone by spreading falsehoods and creating alarmist responses.