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Why Britain doesn’t build

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Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#371

Post by mrcartmeneses »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #230
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> adult social care crisis, a pension crisis, and in some areas a rundown NHS I remember about 10 years ago, "the idea" was that retirees would, as their health starts to decline, do equity-release in their homes to pay for their care needs (on the basis that the NHS would start to means-test care based on the value of all assets, including housing, so that if an OAP has £1m locked-up in their house and they probably…

Theresa May tried to sell this as part of her election campaign. It was a disaster. No one wants to be forced to give up some of their personal wealth to pay more for an NHS they've already paid into. That may not be fair, but when most voters are property owners you're not going to get a different outcome. This is an interesting topic because it highlights how the political and economic culture is broken and incapab…

It’s I my broken because our electoral system favours conservative outcomes. If we had proportional representation then many of the issues that seem impossible would suddenly become easy to solve.

Edit: in before anyone asks for evidence of favouring conservative outcomes: Boris Johnson had a landslide 80 seat majority with only 43.6% of the popular vote. PR would mean more coalition governments, but those would largely be left leaning Labour/Lib/SNP even when the conservatives have higher than historically average vote shares.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#372

Post by DeathArrow »

vogon_laureate wrote: post #158
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Politicians and the bureaucratic class have deep investments in real estate 2. Foreign money keeps flooding into western economies to find a safe haven and lack of capital controls. A bulk of it goes into real estate. 3. Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners. The entire system is rigged against anything that would impact home prices - such as an increase in supply or ch…

It’s even worse because there’s an adult social care crisis, a pension crisis, and in some areas a rundown NHS and school system. So all the incentives are towards not just home ownership but also additional buy-to-let ownership so that those with the means can afford private health care, dentistry, school fees for their kids/grandkids, inheritance for the kids who are priced out of the market, and retirement. It’s a…

>It’s even worse because there’s an adult social care crisis, a pension crisis, and in some areas a rundown NHS and school system. So all the incentives are towards not just home ownership but also additional buy-to-let ownership so that those with the means can afford private health care, dentistry, school fees for their kids/grandkids, inheritance for the kids who are priced out of the market, and retirement.

It's also about rapidly declining population and people not willing to work. The result of welfare state.

If you incentivize people to develop themselves, acquire skills and knowledge, work and make kids, then they will be able to afford housing, medical care and pensions.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#373

Post by lucubratory »

siquick wrote: post #367
lucubratory wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's the same in the UK, but in Australia 63% of MPs are landlords, compared to only 7% of the general population. Almost no MPs are renters, compared to 30% of the general population. These people are never going to meaningfully help renters because doing so harms landlords, and they are landlords. There's no legitimacy to a system like this, being ruled by people who have completely different fundam…

It’s so rare that one of the candidates for my area in the NSW election even had “Vote a renter into parliament” on every one of her posters and flyers.

Yep, I took particular note of Max Chandler-Mather after seeing a particularly passionate and persuasive speech on housing affordability (this one: https://youtu.be/DD54fVtlUSA). Looked him up to see if he was himself a landlord, he's one of the very few that isn't.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#374

Post by DeathArrow »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #208
vogon_laureate wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s even worse because there’s an adult social care crisis, a pension crisis, and in some areas a rundown NHS and school system. So all the incentives are towards not just home ownership but also additional buy-to-let ownership so that those with the means can afford private health care, dentistry, school fees for their kids/grandkids, inheritance for the kids who are priced out of the market, and retirement. It’s a…

> adult social care crisis, a pension crisis, and in some areas a rundown NHS I remember about 10 years ago, "the idea" was that retirees would, as their health starts to decline, do equity-release in their homes to pay for their care needs (on the basis that the NHS would start to means-test care based on the value of all assets, including housing, so that if an OAP has £1m locked-up in their house and they probably…

So people are expected to pay twice for healthcare, just because they own a house?

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#375

Post by DeathArrow »

mmarq wrote: post #334
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theresa May tried to sell this as part of her election campaign. It was a disaster. No one wants to be forced to give up some of their personal wealth to pay more for an NHS they've already paid into. That may not be fair, but when most voters are property owners you're not going to get a different outcome. This is an interesting topic because it highlights how the political and economic culture is broken and incapab…

> Theresa May tried to sell this as part of her election campaign. It was a disaster. No one wants to be forced to give up some of their personal wealth to pay more for an NHS they've already paid into. It's not as simple as "give up some of their personal wealth to pay more for an NHS they've already paid into". If you have 20K in your bank account and no property, you have to pay for your care. If you own 2 flats w…

They already paid for NHS during their active period. Why should people have to pay again, once retired? If you request them to pay for healthcare, after they are retired, then you shouldn't ask them for money during their active period.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#376

Post by DeathArrow »

CaptainMarvel wrote: post #369
Lastodon wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an unearned windfall, but people deserve to keep their homes. It bears noting that the issue is caused by property investors, not homeowners. How about we go for the individuals that own more than 3 properties and let grandma keep what she earned?

She may have earned the house to some degree (the article outlines a number of government subsidies which make this doubtful), but she definitely didn’t earn the land value increase. I’m reminded of this quote: > Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and n…

Marx or Lenin couldn't have said it better. Marxists have a fetish with seizing private property and forcefully equalizing people in poverty.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#377

Post by DeathArrow »

majormajor wrote: post #225
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Politicians and the bureaucratic class have deep investments in real estate 2. Foreign money keeps flooding into western economies to find a safe haven and lack of capital controls. A bulk of it goes into real estate. 3. Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners. The entire system is rigged against anything that would impact home prices - such as an increase in supply or ch…

The purpose of real estate development is to make real estate more valuable. So if you have laws restricting that development you need to look further than just "real-estate investors don't want development." Even ones not doing the development benefit financially - landlords love being able to raise the rents cause other people in the area built a bunch of new shit. The better off - and therefore more politically-co…

> the more you care about "I don't want the wrong people living next to me"

Then, by some modern definition, you are a nazi and a bigot.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#378

Post by anovikov »

midoridensha wrote: post #282
anovikov wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see a problem here. It only happens because (slightly) more than half of voters are happy with their housing situation and prefer it stay the way it is (that is, perpetually increasing prices, so they can earn equity => retire). They consciously vote for people who ensures just that. There is no failure of democracy here, but rather a good indication of it's strength.

It's true that the people are getting what they're voting for, but I wouldn't call this "not a failure of democracy", when the voters are causing their society to decay and die slowly because of their own short-sightedness. However, we haven't exactly seen better systems of governance, plus not all democratic societies are filled with such short-sighted idiots like we see in the US, and those societies are doing much…

How is this short-sightedness? Voters are voting for what's best for them, and it is indeed best for them. There are only two ways of fixing it: cancel democracy (in a dictatorship no one gives a damn about what people want, and developers make max profit by building everything they want), or cancel market economy, so the housing can't be sold or bought and the Party distributes it as it sees fit. Both looks to me worse than what we have today.

Cruel explanation: there is no way of organising society that's good for more than a half of people.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#379

Post by jraedisch »

DeathArrow wrote: post #372
vogon_laureate wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s even worse because there’s an adult social care crisis, a pension crisis, and in some areas a rundown NHS and school system. So all the incentives are towards not just home ownership but also additional buy-to-let ownership so that those with the means can afford private health care, dentistry, school fees for their kids/grandkids, inheritance for the kids who are priced out of the market, and retirement. It’s a…

>It’s even worse because there’s an adult social care crisis, a pension crisis, and in some areas a rundown NHS and school system. So all the incentives are towards not just home ownership but also additional buy-to-let ownership so that those with the means can afford private health care, dentistry, school fees for their kids/grandkids, inheritance for the kids who are priced out of the market, and retirement. It's…

How would you incentivize people to have children?

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#380

Post by prakhar897 »

com2kid wrote: post #190
ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

The developed world has one great example of functional housing policy: Japan. A single policy that allows for unique neighborhoods, affordable houses, supports small businesses, and enables walkable cities. Just.... do what we know already works. For anyone not familiar, here is a primer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk

Another primer if you still have any doubt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUFZ1_fC3Kw

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