“
A Master is not someone who merely revels in the benefits that he reaps from the power and control that he wields over his sub. A Master is not just an automaton who emotionally doles out orders and watches with amusement as his minions perform his bidding. A Master is not a person who only relishes the benefits that his superior status entitles him.
Certainly all of these characteristics could and often do exist within a Master. He may be demanding and at times selfish. He may genuinely enjoy and even be aroused by the power that he has over a sub. He may be able to expertly control his emotions, issuing his commands and enforcing his discipline with stone-faced determination.
But a true Master, a Master such as Matt, was so invested in his sub that he was actually in a way a slave himself. He was a slave to his love for me. He was a slave to his responsibility. He was a slave to the passion and the commitment. He was a slave to his overwhelming desire to protect his property at all costs. He was a slave to his slave. I knew without questions that he loved me so much he'd literally lay down his life for me. He owned me, and his ownership owned him
”
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Jeff Erno (Building a Family (Puppy Love #2))
“
The best real estate investments with the highest yields are in working-class neighborhoods, because fancy properties are overpriced.
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Brian Linnekens
“
Real estate investing, even on a very small scale, remains a tried and true means of building an individual's cash flow and wealth.
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Robert T. Kiyosaki
“
IP is an intangible asset—an idea converted into transferable personal property rights through patents, trademarks, copyrights, service marks, and trade secrets. IP covers every famous animated character you’ve ever heard of, the logos on your clothing. IP covers products and services you use every day—from flashlights to mobile phones, packaging to cars, food and beverage products, to smart thermostats. IP is not only for big businesses. Most start-ups and event microbusinesses have IP of some kind.
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JiNan George (The IP Miracle: How to Transform Ideas into Assets that Multiply Your Business)
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A person who owns property and has a stake in the enterprise is likely to work harder and feel happier and do a better job than a person who doesn
”
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Peter Lynch (Learn to Earn: A Beginner's Guide to the Basics of Investing and)
“
When the middle classes get passionate about politics, they're arguing about their treats—their tax breaks and their investments. When the poor get passionate about politics, they're fighting for their lives.
Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, more animalistic. No classical music for us—no walking around National Trust properties or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in means, and slums, without literacy, or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor—that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better later. We live now—for our instant, hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio.
You must never, never forget when you talk to someone poor, that it takes ten times the effort to get anywhere from a bad post code. It's a miracle when someone from a bad post code gets anywhere, son. A miracle they do anything at all.
”
”
Caitlin Moran (How to Build a Girl (How to Build a Girl, #1))
“
Life itself is so extraordinary and unique that the only thing keeping people ordinary is themselves.
”
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Brandon Turner (The Book on Rental Property Investing: How to Create Wealth and Passive Income Through Smart Buy & Hold Real Estate Investing)
“
With small companies, my investment strategy is to be out of the stock in a year. My real estate strategy, on the other hand, is to start small and keep trading the properties up for bigger properties and, therefore, delaying paying taxes on the gain. This allows the value to increase dramatically. I generally hold real estate less than seven years.
”
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Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not)
“
Step by step, place became property, property became a mortgage, and
mortgages became derivative investments.
”
”
Douglas Rushkoff (Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back)
“
Terrified by the 1917 Russian revolution, government officials came to believe that communism could be defeated in the United States by getting as many white Americans as possible to become homeowners—the idea being that those who owned property would be invested in the capitalist system.
”
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Richard Rothstein (The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America)
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You can't solve today's new problems with yesterday's old processes
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Rick Otton
“
Our home is our castle, our sanctuary, our haven of safety. It is where we can just be, create, and enjoy the pleasures of life. Jewel Star
”
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Jewel Star (7 MAGIC KEYS TO BUYING A HOME: What You Need to Know for Savvy Home Buying)
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Even a moment's reflection will help you see that the problem of using your time well is not a problem of the mind but of the heart. It will only yield to a change in the very way we feel about time. The value of time must change for us. And then the way we think about it will change, naturally and wisely.
That change in feeling and in thinking is combined in the words of a prophet of God in this dispensation. It was Brigham Young, and the year was 1877, and he was speaking at April general conference. He wasn't talking about time or schedules or frustrations with too many demands upon us. Rather, he was trying to teach the members of the Church how to unite themselves in what was called the united order. The Saints were grappling with the question of how property should be distributed if they were to live the celestial law. In his usual direct style, he taught the people that they were having trouble finding solutions because they misunderstood the problem. Particularly, he told them they didn't understand either property or the distribution of wealth. Here is what he said:
With regard to our property, as I have told you many times, the property which we inherit from our Heavenly Father is our time, and the power to choose in the disposition of the same. This is the real capital that is bequeathed unto us by our Heavenly Father; all the rest is what he may be pleased to add unto us. To direct, to counsel and to advise in the disposition of our time, pertains to our calling as God's servants, according to the wisdom which he has given and will continue to give unto us as we seek it. [JD 18:354]
Time is the property we inherit from God, along with the power to choose what we will do with it. President Young calls the gift of life, which is time and the power to dispose of it, so great an inheritance that we should feel it is our capital. The early Yankee families in America taught their children and grandchildren some rules about an inheritance. They were always to invest the capital they inherited and live only on part of the earnings. One rule was "Never spend your capital." And those families had confidence the rule would be followed because of an attitude of responsibility toward those who would follow in later generations. It didn't always work, but the hope was that inherited wealth would be felt a trust so important that no descendent would put pleasure ahead of obligation to those who would follow. Now, I can see and hear Brigham Young, who was as flinty a New Englander as the Adams or the Cabots ever hoped to be, as if he were leaning over this pulpit tonight. He would say something like this, with a directness and power I wish I could approach: "Your inheritance is time. It is capital far more precious than any lands or stocks or houses you will ever get. Spend it foolishly, and you will bankrupt yourself and cheapen the inheritance of those that follow you. Invest it wisely, and you will bless generations to come.
“A Child of Promise”, BYU Speeches, 4 May 1986
”
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Henry B. Eyring
“
To speak in nature's language, we must prioritize bio-based structural materials; biopolymers. Biopolymers are natural polymers produced by the cells of living organisms. We're already utilizing them in products, pharma, and even in fashion. But to deploy them on the architectural scale, we need to invest in design and construction technologies that emulate their heirarchical properties by engineering real time chemical formation.
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Neri Oxman
“
Having goals is great--but it's not enough! You need action, too! You will need to get off your butt and change the world yourself, because no one else will do it for you.
”
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Brandon Turner (The Book on Rental Property Investing: How to Create Wealth and Passive Income Through Smart Buy & Hold Real Estate Investing)
“
Don't wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and wait
”
”
Will Rogers
“
For them, slavery was their freedom. They created freedom for themselves by actively engaging and investing in the economy of slavery and keeping African Americans in captivity.
”
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Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers (They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South)
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Out of his other property, out of all the things he had collected, his silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments, he got a secret and intimate feeling; out of her he got none.
”
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John Galsworthy (The Man of Property)
“
Some people will each start investing more of their salary on ‘their’ house and spending less of it on ‘their’ car or cars only when they start being able to take ‘their’ house to work, funerals, weddings, etc.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
The essential difference between rich societies and poor societies does not stem from any greater effort the former devote to work, nor even from any greater technological knowledge the former hold. Instead it arises mainly from the fact that rich nations possess a more extensive network of capital goods wisely invested from an entrepreneurial standpoint. These goods consists of machines, tools, computers, buildings, semi-manufactured goods, software, etc., and they exist due to prior savings of the nation's citizens. In other words, comparatively rich societies possess more wealth because they have more time accumulated in the form of capital goods, which places them closer in time to the achievement of much more valuable goals.
”
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Jesús Huerta de Soto
“
So here is what this movement of millions should do, for a start: announce and enforce the prohibition. Damage and destroy new CO2-emitting devices. Put them out of commission, pick them apart, demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep on investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed.
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Andreas Malm (How to Blow Up a Pipeline)
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In this martial world dominated by men, women had little place. The Church's teachings might underpin feudal morality, yet when it came to the practicalities of life, a ruthless pragmatism often came into play. Kings and noblemen married for political advantage, and women rarely had any say in how they or their wealth were to be disposed in marriage. Kings would sell off heiresses and rich widows to the highest bidder, for political or territorial advantage, and those who resisted were heavily fined.
Young girls of good birth were strictly reared, often in convents, and married off at fourteen or even earlier to suit their parents' or overlord's purposes. The betrothal of infants was not uncommon, despite the church's disapproval. It was a father's duty to bestow his daughters in marriage; if he was dead, his overlord or the King himself would act for him. Personal choice was rarely and issue.
Upon marriage, a girl's property and rights became invested in her husband, to whom she owed absolute obedience. Every husband had the right to enforce this duty in whichever way he thought fit--as Eleanor was to find out to her cost. Wife-beating was common, although the Church did at this time attempt to restrict the length of the rod that a husband might use.
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Alison Weir (Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life (World Leaders Past & Present))
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There will come a day when the properties my partner and I own will be sold. But until that day, the cash flow generated from them, and their appreciation in value, ensures that we have the ability to do the things we love today, and in the future.
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Ken McElroy (The ABCs of Real Estate Investing: The Secrets of Finding Hidden Profits Most Investors Miss (Rich Dad's Advisors))
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One common factor among all rich people on earth is that they all invest in earth.
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Amit Kalantri
“
The most profitable investment on the land is land.
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Amit Kalantri
“
A great real estate agent don't sells, he helps.
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Amit Kalantri
“
A good real estate agent sells himself before he sells his services.
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Amit Kalantri
“
A goal without a plan is just a wish.” —ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY
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Brandon Turner (The Book on Rental Property Investing: How to Create Wealth With Intelligent Buy and Hold Real Estate Investing)
“
Let me share with you one of my all-time favorite quotes. Michael Jordan (yes, that Michael Jordan) once said, “Some people want it to happen. Some wish it would happen. Others make it happen.
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Brandon Turner (The Book on Rental Property Investing: How to Create Wealth and Passive Income Through Smart Buy & Hold Real Estate Investing)
“
The motivation for taking on debt is to buy assets or claims rising in price. Over the past half-century the aim of financial investment has been less to earn profits on tangible capital investment than to generate “capital” gains (most of which take the form of debt-leveraged land prices, not industrial capital). Annual price gains for property, stocks and bonds far outstrip the reported real estate rents, corporate profits and disposable personal income after paying for essential non-discretionary spending, headed by FIRE [Finance, Insurance, Real Estate]-sector charges.
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Michael Hudson (The Bubble and Beyond)
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Cicero himself had large amounts of money invested in low-grade property and once joked, more out of superiority than embarrassment, that even the rats had packed up and left one of his crumbling rental blocks.
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Mary Beard (SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome)
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The name ‘JSW’, you will note, is not particularly imaginative. Nor is it the kind of thing you would imagine is incredible intellectual property. Yet, in 2014, JSW Steel told shareholders that it would pay Rs 125 crore a year to a firm entirely owned by Sajjan Jindal’s wife, Sangita. In return, Sangita Jindal would graciously permit her husband to use the ‘JSW’ acronym, which JSW Steel insists her company, JSW Investments, owns.
”
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Mihir S. Sharma (Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy)
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In Singapore, migration is not about ideals or dreams or what the country stands for. In Singapore, the impetus is often purely transactional—including lower tax rates, safer streets, and the ability to invest in property.
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Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh (Hard Choices: Challenging the Singapore Consensus)
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$16 billion in complex securities whose value ultimately turned on the ability of a Las Vegas stripper with five investment properties, or a Mexican strawberry picker with a single $750,000 home, to make rapidly rising interest payments.
”
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Michael Lewis (The Big Short)
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That animal is not your possession. He doesn't exist for your amusement. He has needs, instincts. Urges."
The way he said that word, in that deep, earthy growl, had chills rippling over her skin.
She swallowed hard. "Urges?"
"Yes. Urges." He sauntered toward her- as much as a man could saunter in knee-deep water. "But what could a lady like you know about those?"
"Oh, I understand urges. Right now, I have the powerful urge to do this."
She shoved him hard in the chest, hoping to send him flailing backward into the river.
He didn't budge. Not a teeter. Not a totter.
Not even a blink.
Penny would not surrender. She took a step in reverse and then tried again, adding the weight of her body to the effort.
This time, he was ready for her. He caught her wrists in his hands, stopping her before she could even make contact.
"Now, now, Your Ladyship. This is most unbecoming behavior."
"I know that." She clenched her hands into fists. "You are so maddening. You have a way of provoking me, unlike anyone I've ever known. It's as though I become a different person when I'm around you, and I'm not certain I like her."
He pulled her to him. "I like her."
Penny expected he would shortly ruin that statement.
I like her- smoldering pause- potential to increase the return on my property investment.
Not this time.
Instead, he lowered his head until his mouth brushed hers.
Teased her lips apart, until his tongue brushed hers.
And then they tumbled together against the riverbank, and his everything brushed hers.
”
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Tessa Dare (The Wallflower Wager (Girl Meets Duke, #3))
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Upon the death from flu of one German immigrant to America, for example, his widow and son received a sum of money. They invested it in property, and today the immigrant’s grandson is a property magnate purportedly worth billions. His name is Donald Trump.
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Laura Spinney (Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World)
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He was not a bad man, he was a good husband and father, but constant worry about his investments, about the money he earned, about the inevitable expenses that came with being a man of property had worn his nerves to a frazzle so that he was in a constant state of irritation
”
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Mario Puzo
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No power under heaven can force the landlord to invest a penny in the upkeep of his property, and, if you think you can’t get blood from a stone, watch salesmen of every description operating in the ghetto. Buy a bedroom suite in Harlem, or anything else, on the installment plan—
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James Baldwin (The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reissued Edition)
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Settlers in isolated regions of the countryside had risen up against the unpopular whiskey tax Washington had implemented three years earlier in 1791. Since then, the insurrection had swelled into a debate over the nation’s soul. The question of how to best tax whiskey would partially determine how to organize a loose collection of isolated areas into a nation. Would big business or small be the guiding force? The rebellion threatened the young nation’s sovereignty, and because Washington had speculatively invested in frontier property, it also threatened his personal fortune.
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Reid Mitenbuler (Bourbon Empire: The Past and Future of America's Whiskey)
“
There's one big difference between the poor and the rich,' Kite says, taking a drag from his cigarette. We are in a pub, at lunch-time. John Kite is always, unless stated otherwise, smoking a fag, in a pub, at lunch-time.
'The rich aren't evil, as so many of my brothers would tell you. I've known rich people -- I have played on their yachts -- and they are not unkind, or malign, and they do not hate the poor, as many would tell you. And they are not stupid -- or at least, not any more than the poor are. Much as I find amusing the idea of a ruling class of honking toffs, unable to put their socks on without Nanny helping them, it is not true. They build banks, and broker deals, and formulate policy, all with perfect competency.
'No -- the big difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich are blithe. They believe nothing can ever really be so bad, They are born with the lovely, velvety coating of blitheness -- like lanugo, on a baby -- and it is never rubbed off by a bill that can't be paid; a child that can't be educated; a home that must be left for a hostel, when the rent becomes too much.
'Their lives are the same for generations. There is no social upheaval that will really affect them. If you're comfortably middle-class, what's the worst a government policy could do? Ever? Tax you at 90 per cent and leave your bins, unemptied, on the pavement. But you and everyone you know will continue to drink wine -- but maybe cheaper -- go on holiday -- but somewhere nearer -- and pay off your mortgage -- although maybe later.
'Consider, now, then, the poor. What's the worst a government policy can do to them? It can cancel their operation, with no recourse to private care. It can run down their school -- with no escape route to a prep. It can have you out of your house and into a B&B by the end of the year. When the middle-classes get passionate about politics, they're arguing about their treats -- their tax breaks and their investments. When the poor get passionate about politics, they're fighting for their lives.
'Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us -- no walking around National Trust properties, or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful; dying in mines, and slums, without literacy, or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate, then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor -- that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better, later. We live now -- for our instant, hot, fast treats, to prep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio.
'You must never, never forget, when you talk to someone poor, that it takes ten times the effort to get anywhere from a bad postcode, It's a miracle when someone from a bad postcode gets anywhere, son. A miracle they do anything at all.
”
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Caitlin Moran (How to Build a Girl (How to Build a Girl, #1))
“
The super-rich have so much that there is no way they can spend all of it on things they can use, so they recycle the rest into further rounds of speculation, buying up property, companies and financial assets that generate little or no productive investment, and merely siphon off more wealth that others have produced.
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Andrew Sayer (Why We Can't Afford the Rich)
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High speed auto travel has no place in urban areas where the cost of development demands a complex neighborhood pattern with a mixing of uses, multiple modes of travel and a public realm that enhances the value of the adjacent properties. High speed traffic destroys value within our neighborhoods. It drives out investment.
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Charles L. Marohn Jr. (Thoughts on Building Strong Towns, Volume 1)
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Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken: the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
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Martin Luther King Jr. (The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.)
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It is one of those things not easily accounted for, that men who would scorn to do an injustice to a fellow man, in a private transaction, — who would scorn to usurp any arbitrary dominion over him, or his property, — who would be in the highest degree indignant, if charged with any private injustice, — and who, at a moment’s warning, would take their lives in their hands, to defend their own rights, and redress their own wrongs, — will, the moment they become members of what they call a government, assume that they are absolved from all principles and all obligations that were imperative upon them, as individuals; will assume that they are invested with a right of arbitrary and irresponsible dominion over other men, and other men’s property.
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Lysander Spooner
“
By May 2007, however, there was a growing dispute between Howie Hubler and Morgan Stanley. Amazingly, it had nothing to do with the wisdom of owning $16 billion in complex securities whose value ultimately turned on the ability of a Las Vegas stripper with five investment properties, or a Mexican strawberry picker with a single $750,000 home, to make rapidly rising interest payments.
”
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Michael Lewis (The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine)
“
. John Bonavia is one real estate entrepreneur who has worked hard to get a successful fortune in real estate. His plans and strategies have helped in getting the best deals to the desk along with attracting potential buyers for his properties. When we talk about the real estate market it is very important as a beginner or a previous investor to know which market you are investing in.
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john bonavia
“
I know it is difficult to understand, Sita. I don’t know why my story was told to you and how it was narrated. Indra lusted after me. Like everyone else, he too looked at women as if they are meant for men’s enjoyment. Knowing that I wouldn’t surrender to his desire, he came in the hours of darkness in the guise of my husband. Did I see through his disguise? That is the question that bothers many people in this world. But to my husband, the question was irrelevant. It was the same to him either way. His property, even if temporarily, had fallen into the hands of another. It was polluted. Pollution, cleanliness, purity, impurity, honour, dishonour—Brahmin men have invested these words with such power that there is no scope in them for truth and untruth. No distinction.
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Volga (The Liberation of Sita)
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Any so-called 'radical' strategy that seeks to empower the disempowered in the realm of social reproduction by opening up that realm to monetisation and market forces is headed in exactly the wrong direction. Providing financial literacy classes for the populace at large will simply expose that population predatory practices as they seek to manage their own investment portfolios like minnows swimming in a sea of sharks. Providing microcredit and microfinance facilities encourages people to participate in the market economy but does so in such a way as to maximise the energy they have to expend while minimising their returns. Providing legal title for land property ownership in the hope that this will bring economic and social stability to the lives of the marginalised will almost certainly lead in the long run to their dispossession and eviction from that space and place they already hold through customary use rights.
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David Harvey (Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism)
“
He had envisioned a river of rent payments from apartments and businesses that would eventually pay off his financiers and yield millions of dollars in net revenues even as inflation drove up the value of the property. This formula—investment + time = revenue and higher value—was the magic of real estate. By following it, Fred Trump had amassed assets that allowed him to develop ever bigger projects while simultaneously reducing the risk to his personal fortune.
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Michael D'Antonio (Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success)
“
If you've thought that investment advisors were hired to invest, you may be bewildered by this technique. After buying a farm, would a rational owner next order his real estate agent to start selling off pieces of it whenever a neighboring property was sold at a lower price? Or would you sell your house to whatever bidder was available at 9:31 on some morning merely because at 9:30 a similar house sold for less than it would have brought on the previous day? p213
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Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders)
“
The East India Company was no apparition though; it was the template for many subsequent corporations […] Liberals betray themselves […] the moment they turn a blind eye to this kind of hyper-concentrated power. […] This is why trading in apples does not come even close to trading in shares. Large quantities may produce, at worse, lots of bad cider, but large amounts of money invested in liquid shares can release demonic forces that no market or state can control.
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Yanis Varoufakis (Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present)
“
At least a dozen different so-called good institutions have been identified. Without attempting to rank them in order of importance, but just listing them alphabetically, they include: control of inflation, educational opportunities, effectiveness of government, enforcement of contracts, freedom from trade barriers, incentives and opportunities for investment of capital, lack of corruption, low risk of assassination, open currency exchange, protection of private property rights, rule of law,
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Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (20th Anniversary Edition))
“
when the great intolerance of faith was lost, the secular robe of office had to supplant the sacred one, and society had to separate itself into secular hierarchies with secular uniforms and invest these with the absolute authority of a creed. And because, when the secular exalts itself as the absolute, the result is always romanticism, so the real and characteristic romanticism of that age was the cult of the uniform, which implied, as it were, a superterrestrial and supertemporal idea of uniform, an idea which did not really exist and yet was so powerful that it took hold of men far more completely than any secular vocation could, a non-existent and yet so potent idea that it transformed the man in uniform into the property of his uniform, and never into a professional man in the civilian sense; and this perhaps simply because the man who wears the uniform is content to feel that he is fulfilling the most essential function of his age and therefore guaranteeing the security of his own life.
”
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Hermann Broch (The Sleepwalkers (The Sleepwalkers, #1-3))
“
A tax on capital would be a less violent and more efficient response to the eternal problem of private capital and its return. A progressive levy on individual wealth would reassert control over capitalism in the name of the general interest while relying on the forces of private property and competition. Each type of capital would be taxed in the same way, with no discrimination a priori, in keeping with the principle that investors are generally in a better position than the government to decide what to invest in.
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Thomas Piketty (Capital in the Twenty-First Century)
“
The presumption that a high rate of continuous economic growth is possible puts a premium on investment in the sorts of institutions and conditions that facilitate such growth, like political stability, property rights, technology, and scientific research. On the other hand, if we assume that there are only limited possibilities for productivity improvements, then societies are thrown into a zero-sum world in which predation, or the taking of resources from someone else, is often a far more plausible route to power and wealth.
”
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Francis Fukuyama (The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution)
“
You have to ask what the end game is here — when 25 percent of Palo Alto homes are sold to overseas buyers as investments while the mainland Chinese property market tanks, when Palo Alto schools are known for their suicide rates as much as their academics, when the city that gave birth to the technology industry now can’t even house startups because of its sky-high commercial rents, when Latino and black communities are being wiped from the Western side of the San Francisco Bay Area and Oakland out into the exurbs of the East only to be called back by smartphone to deliver laundry or drive people around.
”
”
Anonymous
“
The third acquisition was a big single-family house. I found an architect, a small local general contractor, and we created a design for four separate units. Then I went to the bank and got loans to do the renovation. I was twenty-three, with a BA in political science. I didn’t know anything about financing. But it never crossed my mind that I might be too young to start an investment business or that I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know any better, but was able to sell the banks on my ability to get it done. Our management company took over the property, did the renovation, and rented the units. The asset did very well.
”
”
Sam Zell (Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel)
“
Why some brilliant people are failures. I’ve been close for many years to a person who qualifies as a genius, has high abstract intelligence, and is Phi Beta Kappa. Despite this very high native intelligence, he is one of the most unsuccessful people I know. He has a very mediocre job (he’s afraid of responsibility). He has never married (lots of marriages end in divorce). He has few friends (people bore him). He’s never invested in property of any kind (he might lose his money). This man uses his great brainpower to prove why things won’t work rather than directing his mental power to searching for ways to succeed.
”
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David J. Schwartz (The Magic of Thinking Big)
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Quite unlike, for example, the British aristocracy, whose traditions put great store by the continuity of ownership of their country houses, the Roman elite were always buying, selling and moving. It is true that Cicero hung on to some family property in Arpinum, but he bought his Palatine house only in 62 BCE, from Crassus, who may have owned it as an investment opportunity rather than as a residence; and before that the house of Livius Drusus, where he was assassinated in 91 BCE, had stood on the site. Cicero’s estate at Tusculum had passed from Sulla to a deeply conservative senator, Quintus Lutatius Catulus, and finally to a rich ex-slave, known to us only as Vettius, in the twenty-five years before Cicero bought it in the early 60s BCE.
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Mary Beard (SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome)
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What if, however, humans exceed animals in their capacity for violence precisely because they speak? As Hegel was already well aware, there is something violent in the very symbolisation of a thing, which equals its mortification. This violence operates at multiple levels. Language simplifies the designated thing, reducing it to a single feature. It dismembers the thing, destroying its organic unity, treating its parts and properties as autonomous. It inserts the thing into a field of meaning which is ultimately external to it. When we name gold “gold,” we violently extract a metal from its natural texture, investing into it our dreams of wealth, power, spiritual purity, and so on, which have nothing whatsoever to do with the immediate reality of gold.
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Slavoj Žižek (Violence: Six Sideways Reflections)
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In nearly all of the country’s nineteen thousand municipalities,117 declining or stagnant property tax revenues, along with mounting costs, have reached crisis proportions. The opioid crisis, the mass shootings, the rising rates of suicide, especially among middle-aged white males, the morbid obesity, the obsession with gambling, the investment of our emotional and intellectual life in tawdry spectacles, and the allure of magical thinking, from the absurd promises of the Christian right to the belief that reality is never an impediment to our desires, are the pathologies of a diseased culture. They have risen from a decayed world where opportunity, which confers status, self-esteem, and dignity, has dried up for most Americans. They are expressions of morbidity.
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Chris Hedges (America: The Farewell Tour)
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I looked at him over my glass of citronade. It was not easy to explain my father and usually I never talked about him. He was my secret property. Preserved for me alone, much as Manderley was preserved for my neighbour. I had no wish to introduce him casually over a table in a Monte Carlo restaurant.
There was a strange air of unreality about that luncheon, and looking back upon it now it is invested for me with a curious glamour. There was I, so much of a schoolgirl still, who only the day before had sat with Mrs Van Hopper, prim, silent, and subdued, and twenty-four hours afterwards my family history was mine no longer, I shared it with a man I did not know. For some reason I felt impelled to speak, because his eyes followed me in sympathy like the Gentleman Unknown.
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Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca)
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So much of what my generation had been promised disintegrated at our touch. Consider the friend, a painter of seascapes, who dreamed of affording waterfront property. On the day the levees broke, the Gulf flooded her studio and painted her walls with costly oils. Consider the friend who worked for six years at a company he hated on the promise of a sabbatical, only to be let go. The friend who complained about family reunions and lost every relative over the age of fifty to a virus. The friend who saved up to invest in a fund and saw her money dissolve like sugar on the tongues of bankers who barely got a scolding from the SEC. The life we'd been promised was a scam, the world a scam, the whole goddamn play a scam and there seemed nothing to do but burn it down as rioters did in Paris, New York, Nairobi—and then creep back through the embers because what other choice did we have?
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C Pam Zhang (Land of Milk and Honey)
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The fashion now is to think of universities as industries or businesses. University presidents, evidently thinking of themselves as CEO's, talk of "business plans" and "return on investment," as if the industrial economy could provide an aim and a critical standard appropriate either to education or to research.
But this is not possible. No economy, industrial or otherwise, can supply an appropriate aim or standard. Any economy must be either true or false to the world and to our life in it. If it is to be true, then it must be made true, according to a standard that is not economic.
To regard the economy as an end or as the measure of success is merely to reduce students, teachers, researchers, and all they know or learn to merchandise. It reduces knowledge to "property" and education to training for the "job market."
If, on the contrary, [Sir Albert] Howard was right in his belief that health is the "one great subject," then a unifying aim and a common critical standard are clearly implied. Health is at once quantitative and qualitative; it requires both sufficiency and goodness. It is comprehensive (it is synonymous with "wholeness"), for it must leave nothing out. And it is uncompromisingly local and particular; it has to do with the sustenance of particular places, creatures, human bodies, and human minds.
If a university began to assume responsibility for the health of its place and its local constituents, then all of its departments would have a common aim, and they would have to judge their place and themselves and one another by a common standard. They would need one another's knowledge. They would have to communicate with one another; the diversity of specialists would have to speak to one another in a common language. And here again Howard is exemplary, for he wrote, and presumably spoke, a plain, vigorous, forthright English-- no jargon, no condescension, no ostentation, no fooling around.
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Wendell Berry
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Recognizing how most great fortunes had been built up in predatory ways, through usury, war lending and political insider dealings to grab the Commons and carve out burdensome monopoly privileges led to a popular view of financial magnates, landlords and hereditary ruling elite as parasitic by the 19th century, epitomized by the French anarchist Proudhon’s slogan “Property as theft.” Instead of creating a mutually beneficial symbiosis with the economy of production and consumption, today’s financial parasitism siphons off income needed to invest and grow. Bankers and bondholders desiccate the host economy by extracting revenue to pay interest and dividends. Repaying a loan – amortizing or “killing” it – shrinks the host. Like the word amortization, mortgage (“dead hand” of past claims for payment) contains the root mort, “death.” A financialized economy becomes a mortuary when the host economy becomes a meal for the financial free luncher that takes interest, fees and other charges without contributing to production.
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Michael Hudson (Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy)
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Spearing a quail egg with her fork, Evie popped it into her mouth. “What is to be done about Mr. Egan?”
His shoulders lifted in a graceful shrug. “As soon as he is sober enough to walk, he’ll be dismissed.”
Evie brushed away a stray lock of hair that had fallen over her cheek. “There is no one to replace him.”
“Yes, there is. Until a suitable manager can be found, I’ll run the club.”
The quail egg seemed to stick in her throat, and Evie choked a little. Hastily she reached for her wine, washed it down, and regarded him with bulging eyes. How could he say something so preposterous? “You can’t.”
“I can hardly do worse than Egan. He hasn’t managed a damned thing in months… before long, this place will be falling down around our ears.”
“You said you hated work!”
“So I did. But I feel that I should try it at least once, just to be certain.”
She began to stammer in her anxiety. “You’ll pl-play at this for a few days, and then you’ll tire of it.”
“I can’t afford to tire of it, my love. Although the club is still profitable, its value is in decline. Your father has a load of outstanding debt that must be settled. If the people who owe him can’t muster the cash, we’ll have to take property, jewelry, artwork… whatever they can manage. Having a good idea of the value of things, I can negotiate some acceptable settlements. And there are other problems I haven’t yet mentioned… Jenner has a string of failing Thoroughbreds that have lost a fortune at Newmarket. And he’s made some insane investments— ten thousand pounds he put into an alleged gold mine in Flintshire— a swindle that even a child should have seen through.”
“Oh God,” Evie murmured, rubbing her forehead. “He’s been ill— people have taken advantage—”
“Yes. And now, even if we wanted to sell the club, we couldn’t without first putting it in order. If there were an alternative, believe me, I would find it. But this place is a sieve, with no one who is capable or willing to stop the holes. Except for me.”
“You know nothing about filling holes!” she cried, appalled by his arrogance.
Sebastian responded with a bland smile and the slightest arch of one brow. Before he could open his mouth to reply, she clapped her hands over her ears. "Oh, don't say it, don't!" When she saw that he was obligingly holding his silence-though a devilish gleam remained in his eyes-she lowered her hands cautiously.
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Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
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A golden visa is a permanent residency visa issued to individuals who invest, often through the purchase of property, a certain sum of money into the issuing country.
The United States EB-5 visa program requires overseas applicants to invest a minimum of anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million, depending on the location of the project, and requires at least 10 jobs to be either created or preserved.[22] When these criteria are met, the applicant and their family become eligible for a green card. There is an annual cap of 10,000 applications under the EB-5 program.[citation needed] The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has offered its EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program since 1990. It is designed to encourage foreign investment in infrastructure projects in the U.S., particularly in Targeted Employment Areas (TEA), high unemployment areas. The funds are channeled through agencies called regional centers, now designated only by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The funding opportunities allow the investor to make a sound financial investment and obtain a U.S. “Green Card.
A large majority of users of such programs are wealthy Chinese seeking legal security and a better quality of life outside of their home country.
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Wikipedia: Immigrant investor programs
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If there are costs to becoming legal, there are also bound to be costs to remaining outside the law. We found that operating outside the world of legal work and business was surprisingly expensive. In Peru, for example, the cost of operating a business extralegally includes paying 10 to 15 per cent of its annual income in bribes and commissions to authorities. Add to such payoffs the costs of avoiding penalties, making transfers outside legal channels and operating from dispersed locations and without credit, and the life of the extralegal entrepreneur turns out to be far more costly and full of daily hassles than that of the legal businessman. Perhaps the most significant cost was caused by the absence of institutions that create incentives for people to seize economic and social opportunities to specialize within the market place. We found that people who could not operate within the law also could not hold property efficiently or enforce contracts through the courts; nor could they reduce uncertainty through limited liability systems and insurance policies, or create stock companies to attract additional capital and share risk. Being unable to raise money for investment, they could not achieve economies of scale or protect their innovations through royalties and patents.
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Hernando de Soto (The Mystery Of Capital)
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Switch from a Performance Focus to a Mastery Focus
There’s a way to keep your standards high but avoid the problems that come from perfectionism. If you can shift your thinking from a performance focus to a mastery focus, you’ll become less fearful, more resilient, and more open to good, new ideas. Performance focus is when your highest priority is to show you can do something well now. Mastery focus is when you’re mostly concerned with advancing your skills. Someone with a mastery focus will think, “My goal is to master this skill set” rather than “I need to perform well to prove myself.”
A mastery focus can help you persist after setbacks. To illustrate this, imagine the following scenario: Adam is trying to master the art of public speaking. Due to his mastery goal, he’s likely to take as many opportunities as he can to practice giving speeches. When he has setbacks, he’ll be motivated to try to understand these and get back on track. His mastery focus will make him more likely to work steadily toward his goal. Compare this with performance-focused Rob, who is concerned just with proving his competence each time he gives a talk. Rob will probably take fewer risks in his style of presentation and be less willing to step outside his comfort zone. If he has an incident in which a talk doesn’t go as well as he’d hoped, he’s likely to start avoiding public speaking opportunities.
Mastery goals will help you become less upset about individual instances of failure. They’ll increase your willingness to identify where you’ve made errors, and they’ll help you avoid becoming so excessively critical of yourself that you lose confidence in your ability to rectify your mistakes.
A mastery focus can also help you prioritize—you can say yes to things that move you toward your mastery goal and no to things that don’t. This is great if you’re intolerant of uncertainty, because it gives you a clear direction and rule of thumb for making decisions about which opportunities to pursue.
Experiment: What’s your most important mastery goal right now? Complete this sentence: “My goal is to master the skills involved in ___.” Examples include parenting, turning more website visitors into buyers, property investment, or self-compassion. Based on the mastery goal you picked, answer the following questions. Make your answers as specific as possible.
How would people with your mastery goal:
1. React to mistakes, setbacks, disappointments, and negative moods?
2. Prioritize which tasks they work on? What types of tasks would they deprioritize?
3. React when they’d sunk a lot of time into something and then realized a particular strategy or idea didn’t have the potential they’d hoped it would?
4. Ensure they were optimizing their learning and skill acquisition?
5. React when they felt anxious?
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Alice Boyes (The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points)
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A person can be recognized or granted citizenship on a number of bases. Usually citizenship based on circumstances of birth is automatic, but an application may be required.
Citizenship by birth (jus sanguinis).
Born within a country (jus soli). Some people are automatically citizens of the state in which they are born. Most countries in the Americas grant unconditional jus soli citizenship, while it has been limited or abolished in almost all other countries.
Citizenship by marriage (jus matrimonii).
Naturalization. States normally grant citizenship to people who have entered the country legally and been granted permit to stay, or been granted political asylum, and also lived there for a specified period. In some countries, naturalization is subject to conditions which may include passing a test demonstrating reasonable knowledge of the language or way of life of the host country, good conduct (no serious criminal record) and moral character (such as drunkenness, or gambling), vowing allegiance to their new state or its ruler and renouncing their prior citizenship. Some states allow dual citizenship and do not require naturalized citizens to formally renounce any other citizenship.
Citizenship by investment or Economic Citizenship. Wealthy people invest money in property or businesses, buy government bonds or simply donate cash directly, in exchange for citizenship and a passport.
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Wikipedia: Citizenship
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Bibb Steam Mill Company also introduced to the county the ruthless form of industrial slavery that would become so important as the Civil War loomed. The mill acquired twenty-seven male African Americans, nearly all strapping young men, and kept them packed into just six small barracks on its property. The Cottingham slave cabins would have seemed luxurious in contrast.51 The founders of Bibb Steam, entrepreneurs named William S. Philips, John W. Lopsky, Archibald P. McCurdy, and Virgil H. Gardner, invested a total of $24,000 to purchase 1,160 acres of timbered land and erect a steam-powered sawmill to cut lumber and grind corn and flour.52 In addition to the two dozen slaves, Bibb Steam most likely leased a larger number of slaves from nearby farms during its busiest periods of work. The significance of those evolutions wouldn’t have been lost on a slave such as Scipio. By the end of the 1850s, a vigorous practice of slave leasing was already a fixture of southern life. Farm production was by its nature an inefficient cycle of labor, with intense periods of work in the early spring planting season and then idleness during the months of “laid-by” time in the summer, and then another great burst of harvest activity in the fall and early winter, followed finally by more months of frigid inactivity. Slave owners were keen to maximize the return on their most valuable assets, and as new opportunities for renting out the labor of their slaves arose, the most clever of slave masters quickly responded.
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Douglas A. Blackmon (Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II)
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sighed. “I can’t say that you weren’t expected.” “I’m just going to be walking around here and taking some measurements. It says here… you own eighty acres? That is one of the most gorgeous mansions I have ever seen,” he rambled on. “It must have cost you millions. I could never afford such a beauty. Well, heck, for that matter I couldn’t afford the millions of dollars in taxes a house like this would assess, let alone such a pricey property. Do you have an accountant?” Zo opened her mouth to respond, but he continued, “For an estate this size, I would definitely have one.” “I do have an accountant,” she cut in, with frustration. “Furthermore, I have invested a lot of money bringing this mansion up to speed. You can see my investment is great.” “Of course, it would be. The fact of the matter is, Mrs. Kane, a lot of people are in over their heads in property. You still have to pay up, or we take the place. Well, I’ll get busy now. Pay no mind to me.” He walked on, taking notes. “Clairrrrre!” Zo called as soon as she entered the house. “Bring your cell phone!” Two worry-filled months went by and many calls were made to lawyers, before Zoey finally picked one that made her feel confident. And then the letter came with the totals and the due date. “There is no way we can pay this, Mom, even if we sold off some of our treasures, because a lot of them are contracted to museums anyway. I am feeling awfully poor all of a sudden, and insecure.” “Yes, and I did some research, thinking I’d be forced to sell. It’s unlikely that anyone else around here can afford this place. It looks like they are going to get it all; they aren’t just charging for this year. What we have here is a value about equal to a little country. And all the new construction sites for housing developments suddenly popping up on this side of the river, does not help. Value is going up.” Zo put her head in her hands. “Ohhh, oh, oh, oh!” “Yeah, bring out the ice-cream and cake. I need comforting,” sighed Claire. The cell phone rang. “Yes, tonight? You guys have become pretty good to us, haven’t you?! You know, Bob, Mom and I thought we were just going to pig out on ice cream and cake. We found out we are losing this estate and are going to be poor again and we are bummed out.” There was a long pause. “No, that’s okay, I understand. Yeah, okay, bye.” “Well?” Zo ask dryly. “He was appropriately sorry, and he got off the phone fast, saying he remembered he had other business to take care of. Do you want to cry? I do…” “I’ll get the cake and dish the ice cream. You make our tea and we’ll cry together.” A pitter patter began to drum on the window. “Rain again. It seems softer though, dear.” “I thought you said this was going to be a softer rain!” It started to pour. “At least this is not a thunder storm… What was that?” “Thunder,” replied Claire, unmoved and resigned. An hour had gone by when there was a rapping at the door. “People rarely use the doorbell, ever notice that?” Zo asked on the way to the door. She opened it to reveal two wet guys holding a pizza, salad, soft drink, and giant chocolate chip cookies in a plastic container. In a plastic
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Zoey Kane (The Riddles of Hillgate (Z & C Mysteries #1))
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Peugeot belongs to a particular genre of legal fictions called ‘limited liability companies’. The idea behind such companies is among humanity’s most ingenious inventions. Homo sapiens lived for untold millennia without them. During most of recorded history property could be owned only by flesh-and-blood humans, the kind that stood on two legs and had big brains. If in thirteenth-century France Jean set up a wagon-manufacturing workshop, he himself was the business. If a wagon he’d made broke down a week after purchase, the disgruntled buyer would have sued Jean personally. If Jean had borrowed 1,000 gold coins to set up his workshop and the business failed, he would have had to repay the loan by selling his private property – his house, his cow, his land. He might even have had to sell his children into servitude. If he couldn’t cover the debt, he could be thrown in prison by the state or enslaved by his creditors. He was fully liable, without limit, for all obligations incurred by his workshop. If you had lived back then, you would probably have thought twice before you opened an enterprise of your own. And indeed this legal situation discouraged entrepreneurship. People were afraid to start new businesses and take economic risks. It hardly seemed worth taking the chance that their families could end up utterly destitute. This is why people began collectively to imagine the existence of limited liability companies. Such companies were legally independent of the people who set them up, or invested money in them, or managed them. Over the last few centuries such companies have become the main players in the economic arena, and we have grown so used to them that we forget they exist only in our imagination.
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Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
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Two nights after the Chaworth ball, Gabriel practiced at the billiards table in the private apartments above Jenner's. The luxurious rooms, which had once been occupied by his parents in the earlier days of their marriage, were now reserved for the convenience of the Challon family. Raphael, one of his younger brothers, usually lived at the club, but at the moment was on an overseas trip to America. He'd gone to source and purchase a large quantity of dressed pine timber on behalf of a Challon-owned railway construction company. American pine, for its toughness and elasticity, was used as transom ties for railways, and it was in high demand now that native British timber was in scarce supply.
The club wasn't the same without Raphael's carefree presence, but spending time alone here was better than the well-ordered quietness of his terrace at Queen's Gate. Gabriel relished the comfortably masculine atmosphere, spiced with scents of expensive liquor, pipe smoke, oiled Morocco leather upholstery, and the acrid pungency of green baize cloth. The fragrance never failed to remind him of the occasions in his youth when he had accompanied his father to the club.
For years, the duke had gone almost weekly to Jenner's to meet with managers and look over the account ledgers. His wife Evie had inherited it from her father, Ivo Jenner, a former professional boxer. The club was an inexhaustible financial engine, its vast profits having enabled the duke to improve his agricultural estates and properties, and accumulate a sprawling empire of investments. Gaming was against the law, of course, but half of Parliament were members of Jenner's, which had made it virtually exempt from prosecution.
Visiting Jenner's with his father had been exciting for a sheltered boy. There had always been new things to see and learn, and the men Gabriel had encountered were very different from the respectable servants and tenants on the estate. The patrons and staff at the club had used coarse language and told bawdy jokes, and taught him card tricks and flourishes. Sometimes Gabriel had perched on a tall stool at a circular hazard table to watch high-stakes play, with his father's arm draped casually across his shoulders. Tucked safely against the duke's side, Gabriel had seen men win or lose entire fortunes in a single night, all on the tumble of dice.
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Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Spring (The Ravenels, #3))
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This is a good moment to remember one of Mansfield’s Manly Maxims: “Manly men tend their fields.” It means that we take care of the lives and property entrusted to us. It means that we take responsibility for everything in the “field assigned to us.” We cannot do this without knowledge. We cannot do it if we are ignorant of our times, blind to the trends shaping our lives, and oblivious to the basic knowledge that allows us to do what we are called to do as men. We must know enough about law, health, science, economics, politics, and technology to fulfill our roles. We should also know enough about our faith to stand our ground in a secular age, resist heresies, and teach our families. We also shouldn’t be without the benefits of literature and poetry, of good novels and stirring stories, all of which make us more relevant and more effective. We need all of this, and no one is going to force it upon us. Nor will we acquire what we need from a degree program or a study group alone, as valuable as these can be. The truth is that men who aspire to be genuine men and serve well have no choice: they must devote themselves to an aggressive program of self-education. They have to read books, stay current with websites and periodicals, consult experts, and put themselves in a position to know. It isn’t as hard as it sounds, particularly in our Internet age. Much of what a man needs to know can land in his iPad while he is sleeping, but he has to know enough to value this power in the first place. To ignore this duty can mean disaster. How many men have lost jobs because they did not see massive trends on the horizon? How many men have failed to stay intellectually sharp and so gave up ground in their professions to others with more active minds? How many have lost money through uninformed investments or have not taken opportunities in expanding fields or have missed promotions because they had not bothered to learn about new technologies or what changes social media, for example, would bring to their jobs? I do not want to be negative. Learning is a joy. Reading is one of the great pleasures of life. A man ought to invest in knowledge because it is part of living in this world fully engaged and glorifying God. Yet our times also make it essential. The amount of knowledge in the world is increasing. Technology is transforming our lives. New trends can rise like floodwaters and sweep devastation into our homes. Men committed to tending their fields learn, study, research, dig out facts, and test theories. They know how to safeguard their families. They serve well because they serve as informed men.
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Stephen Mansfield (Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self)
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On quitting Bretton, which I did a few weeks after Paulina’s departure—little thinking then I was never again to visit it; never more to tread its calm old streets—I betook myself home, having been absent six months. It will be conjectured that I was of course glad to return to the bosom of my kindred. Well! the amiable conjecture does no harm, and may therefore be safely left uncontradicted. Far from saying nay, indeed, I will permit the reader to picture me, for the next eight years, as a bark slumbering through halcyon weather, in a harbour still as glass—the steersman stretched on the little deck, his face up to heaven, his eyes closed: buried, if you will, in a long prayer. A great many women and girls are supposed to pass their lives something in that fashion; why not I with the rest? Picture me then idle, basking, plump, and happy, stretched on a cushioned deck, warmed with constant sunshine, rocked by breezes indolently soft. However, it cannot be concealed that, in that case, I must somehow have fallen overboard, or that there must have been wreck at last. I too well remember a time—a long time—of cold, of danger, of contention. To this hour, when I have the nightmare, it repeats the rush and saltness of briny waves in my throat, and their icy pressure on my lungs. I even know there was a storm, and that not of one hour nor one day. For many days and nights neither sun nor stars appeared; we cast with our own hands the tackling out of the ship; a heavy tempest lay on us; all hope that we should be saved was taken away. In fine, the ship was lost, the crew perished. As far as I recollect, I complained to no one about these troubles. Indeed, to whom could I complain? Of Mrs. Bretton I had long lost sight. Impediments, raised by others, had, years ago, come in the way of our intercourse, and cut it off. Besides, time had brought changes for her, too: the handsome property of which she was left guardian for her son, and which had been chiefly invested in some joint-stock undertaking, had melted, it was said, to a fraction of its original amount. Graham, I learned from incidental rumours, had adopted a profession; both he and his mother were gone from Bretton, and were understood to be now in London. Thus, there remained no possibility of dependence on others; to myself alone could I look. I know not that I was of a self-reliant or active nature; but self-reliance and exertion were forced upon me by circumstances, as they are upon thousands besides; and when Miss Marchmont, a maiden lady of our neighbourhood, sent for me, I obeyed her behest, in the hope that she might assign me some task I could undertake.
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Charlotte Brontë (Villette)
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Indian Express (Indian Express) - Clip This Article at Location 721 | Added on Sunday, 30 November 2014 20:28:42 Fifth column: Hope and audacity Ministers, high officials, clerks and peons now report for duty on time and are no longer to be seen taking long lunch breaks to soak in winter sunshine in Delhi’s parks. Reform is needed not just in economic matters but in every area of governance. Does the Prime Minister know how hard it is to get a passport? Tavleen Singh | 807 words At the end of six months of the Modi sarkar are we seeing signs that it is confusing efficiency with reform? I ask the question because so far there is no sign of real reform in any area of governance. And, because some of Narendra Modi’s most ardent supporters are now beginning to get worried. Last week I met a man who dedicated a whole year to helping Modi become Prime Minister and he seemed despondent. When I asked how he thought the government was doing, he said he would answer in the words of the management guru Peter Drucker, “There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.” We can certainly not fault this government on efficiency. Ministers, high officials, clerks and peons now report for duty on time and are no longer to be seen taking long lunch breaks to soak in winter sunshine in Delhi’s parks. The Prime Minister’s Office hums with more noise and activity than we have seen in a decade but, despite this, there are no signs of the policy changes that are vital if we are to see real reform. The Planning Commission has been abolished but there are many, many other leftovers from socialist times that must go. Do we need a Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in an age when the Internet has made propaganda futile? Do we need a meddlesome University Grants Commission? Do we need the government to continue wasting our money on a hopeless airline and badly run hotels? We do not. What we do need is for the government to make policies that will convince investors that India is a safe bet once more. We do not need a new government that simply implements more efficiently bad policies that it inherited from the last government. It was because of those policies that investors fled and the economy stopped growing. Unless this changes through better policies, the jobs that the Prime Minister promises young people at election rallies will not come. So far signals are so mixed that investors continue to shy away. The Finance Minister promises to end tax terrorism but in the next breath orders tax inspectors to go forth in search of black money. Vodafone has been given temporary relief by the courts but the retroactive tax remains valid. And, although we hear that the government has grandiose plans to improve the decrepit transport systems, power stations and ports it inherited, it continues to refuse to pay those who have to build them. The infrastructure industry is owed more than Rs 1.5 lakh continued... crore in government dues and this has crippled major companies. No amount of efficiency in announcing new projects will make a difference unless old dues are cleared. Reform is needed not just in economic matters but in every area of governance. Does the Prime Minister know how hard it is to get a passport? Does he know that a police check is required even if you just want to get a few pages added to your passport? Does he know how hard it is to do routine things like registering property? Does he know that no amount of efficiency will improve healthcare services that are broken? No amount of efficiency will improve educational services that have long been in terminal decline because of bad policies and interfering officials. At the same time, the licence raj that strangles private investment in schools and colleges remains in place. Modi’s popularity with ordinary people has increased since he became Prime Minister, as we saw from his rallies in Kashmir last week, but it will not la
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Anonymous
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Ninety percent of millionaires become so through owning real estate. More money has been made in real estate than in all industrial investments combined. The wise young man or wage earner of today invests his money in real estate. —ANDREW CARNEGIE
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David Greene (Long-Distance Real Estate Investing: How to Buy, Rehab, and Manage Out-of-State Rental Properties)
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Before buying a property, call the Building and Housing department for that particular county and make sure there are no violations on the property, or if it has been condemned.
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Valleywide Real Estate Investments (High Cash Flow Real Estate Investing: Learn The Secrets To Creating Hassle-Free Profitable Cash Flows In Real Estate Investing (Boxed Set-2 Books))
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LDW or Loss Damage Waiver. While this is not actually insurance, it represents an additional investment per day that you agree to make which relieves you of all responsibility for damages to the rental vehicle you are driving. It does not cover any other vehicles or damaged property. This option should be utilized when you have no insurance or when you do not wish to risk having a claim filed against your own policy. You have peace of mind here because you do not have to worry about your insurance rates increasing or your policy being wiped out from a claim.
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Craig Speck (The Ultimate Common Sense Ground Transportation Guide For Churches and Schools: How To Learn Not To Crash and Burn)
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Better are the wounds of a friend than the kisses of an enemy.
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David Greene (Long-Distance Real Estate Investing: How to Buy, Rehab, and Manage Out-of-State Rental Properties)
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And what of colonizing additional dimensions beyond the third? Colonize Time. Why not?” “Because, sir,” objected Dr. Templeton Blope, of the University of the Outer Hebrides, “—we are limited to three.” “Quaternionist talk,” shouted his collegial nemesis Hastings Throyle. “Everything, carnal and spiritual, invested in the given three dimensions—for what use, as your Professor Tate famously asked, are any more than three?” “Ever so frightfully sorry. The given world, in case you hadn’t noticed. Planet Earth.” “Which not so long ago was believed to be a plane surface.” So forth. A recurring argument. Quaternionism in this era still enjoyed the light and warmth of a cheerful noontide. Rival systems might be acknowledged now and then, usually for some property considered bothersome, but those of the Hamiltonian faith felt an immunity to ever being superseded, children imagining they would live forever—though the sizable bloc of them aboard the Malus were not quite certain what the closely guarded Mission Document meant when it described the present journey as being taken “at right angles to the flow of time.
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Thomas Pynchon (Against the Day)
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Real estate is too important, all the battles and wars essentially happened and happens for real estate.
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Amit Kalantri
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A customer oriented realtor not only finds you a good home, he also finds you a good neighborhood.
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Amit Kalantri
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The purpose of real estate agent should be to create a customer who creates customers.
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Amit Kalantri
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A great realtor is always in relationship with real estate.
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Amit Kalantri
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The key to rehabbing a BRRRR property is to make the property as “tenant proof” as possible, using materials that will last a long time and won’t need to be redone later.
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Brandon Turner (The Book on Rental Property Investing: How to Create Wealth and Passive Income Through Smart Buy & Hold Real Estate Investing)
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It is hardly fortuitous that all the chief actors are property owners with no apparent necessity to work; that they are supplied as if by miracle with endless supplies of honey, condensed milk, balloons, popguns, and extract of malt; and that they crave meaningless aristocratic distinctions and will resort to any measure in their drive for class prestige. Not for nothing is the sycophant Pooh eventually invested by Christopher Robin as 'Sir Pooh de Bear.
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Frederick C. Crews (The Pooh Perplex)
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Let us say," I continued, "that you are willing to invest twenty years of your life in a million dollars." ("Merely an illustration," said John Starkweather.) "You have it where you can put it in the bank and take it out again, or you can give it form in houses, yachts, and other things. Now twenty years of my life—to me—is worth more than a million dollars. I simply can't afford to sell it for that. I prefer to invest it, as somebody or other has said, unearned in life. I've always had a liking for intangible properties.
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David Grayson (Adventures in Contentment)
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lot of people don’t realize that a summer home property in Turkey is a great investment, not just a nice second home. Turkey has one of the largest economies in the world and is determined to become one of the strongest economies in the world. This means that the value of the property you buy will increase at the same rate as the country’s economy is growing. So if you have been thinking of buying a property in Turkey, now is the time. Let us at Summer Home Real Estate help you find a good investment property here in Turkey.
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property alanya
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Performing a proof-of-work mechanism or calculating the results is called "mining". Miners try to find a result with certain properties by executing arithmetic operations billions of times. If you have met such a result, you will be rewarded the so-called block reward which is a certain amount of tokens. Transactions are grouped into a block
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Philipp Staiger (Invest smarter in ICOs: Research.Participate.Learn)
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For years, we have all been educated in the public school system and taught how to be an employee where we trade hours for dollars. It’s time to learn a new way of making money for yourself and your family. You
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Dustin Heiner (How to Quit Your Job with Rental Properties: A Step-by-Step Guide to UNLOCKING Passive Income by Investing in Real Estate)
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RBI has given a general permission for NRIs and PIOs to invest in immovable property in India other than agricultural land/plantation property or a farm house. As
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Jigar Patel (NRI Investments and Taxation: A Small Guide for Big Gains)
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He may also acquire any immovable property (including agricultural land, plantation property or farm house) as inheritance from a person resident in or
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Jigar Patel (NRI Investments and Taxation: A Small Guide for Big Gains)
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The investment in immovable property is also subject to the Wealth Tax.
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Jigar Patel (NRI Investments and Taxation: A Small Guide for Big Gains)
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Transfer of Immovable Property An NRI may transfer any immovable property in India to a person resident in India. Thus, an NRI is allowed to transfer (sell, give gift, inheritance or any other way of transfer) any property (residential, commercial, agricultural, plantation, farm house, etc.) to a person resident in India.
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Jigar Patel (NRI Investments and Taxation: A Small Guide for Big Gains)
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The payments cannot be made by travellers cheque, foreign currency notes or by any other modes specifically mentioned for acquiring immovable property.
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Jigar Patel (NRI Investments and Taxation: A Small Guide for Big Gains)
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Any profit on the sale of these properties can only be credited to an NRO account and can be remitted abroad up to the overall ceiling of US$ 1 million per financial year. The
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Jigar Patel (NRI Investments and Taxation: A Small Guide for Big Gains)
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Mr. Kalpit from Oman invested Rs. 3,000,000 in a residential property in India in June 2012 and sold the property for Rs. 4,000,000 in July 2014. As the period of holding is less than 36 months, the gain of Rs. 1,000,000 would be a STCG and added to his other income and taxed as per the slab rates as regular income.
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Jigar Patel (NRI Investments and Taxation: A Small Guide for Big Gains)
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Can you buy more than one residential house and claim an exemption? When the exemption was introduced, it mentioned “a residential house”. It was held by various courts that “a residential house” also means more than one. Thus, if a joint family of a father and two sons living together sells the residential property owned by the father, they were allowed to buy 3 residential properties in the same building to claim the exemption as “a residential house”. However, it was not easy to prove as the taxpayer should have the patience to present his case at every level – Income Tax Officer, Commissioner of Income Tax, Tribunal and sometimes the High court. This has created a lot of controversies as well. The Finance Act (No 2) 2014 amended the provisions to allow exemption for investment in one residential house. Now, the taxpayer cannot invest in multiple residential properties for claiming exemption.
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Jigar Patel (NRI Investments and Taxation: A Small Guide for Big Gains)