Comment by ajross
> For instance, do people who declare their occupation as landlord have some demonstrable income distribution x std deviations above some control group?
Not really. Being a landlord takes a bunch of money to sink into the real estate assets. If you don't put it in there you'd just leave it in a mutual fund or whatever and be making passive income of about the same order. Real Estate is a solid investment choice but it's not *that* much better.
Basically this argument is for the form "being a landlord looks like a working class job but pays better and that's not fair".
But the actual truth on the ground is "being a landlord is just a different way of being wealthy, and you have to fix plumbing on the side instead of working a day job in an office".
Sorry to press but do you have evidence?
Maybe the number of bankruptcies of landlords versus other professions normalized for age (since many bankruptcies are health related and landlords tend to be older).
Is there some hard data somewhere that can be scrutinized rather than narratives and sentiment?
(see I told you I'm unpopular)