Anything not needed for human survival.

A thriving business selling stuff people don't need for them to buy with excess capital they no longer have.

This is just a whataboutism fallacy.

No you're just ignoring a hole in your argument. I could profitably buy a plot of land and use it to store pig feces which happens in North Carolina.

Landlords do no more to provide housing than ticket scalpers do to provide concert tickets.

This analogy doesn't track. They aren't selling something the person could otherwise afford or even want to buy.

Landlords don't work hard. Owning is not a job that provides for society.

Massive overgeneralization. I know contractors that built houses and eventually built one and rented it out for additional income. This means they worked to make the money to buy the land and the materials and invested their own time in building it which saved them a ton on labor costs. Somebody moved into it and lived there (e.g. value). Somebody should report them to the secret police!

I sure am aware. And I'm always aware that the people who do those things aren't landlords. They're construction workers and maintenance workers.

Again. Sometimes that's the case. Sometimes it's a dude taking care of everything himself on the weekend.

The landlords take no such risk because the demand for housing is so high that any vacancies can be filled as quick as they like.

You've never had to clean up a house destroyed by drug addicts. Believe me they can do a ton of damage. There's plenty of risk. No one in this thread understands that though.

Funny how "what the market can bare" equates to entire generations being priced out of owning a home.

I wonder if the macroeconomic factors could play into that? You know? Stagnating wages, a falling dollar, endless wars, cronyism, endless immigration, enriching Blackrock during the 2008 bank crisis so that it can single handedly buy more single-family homes than any other entity in American history. Nope it's Jim from work that rents a condo.