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Why Britain doesn’t build

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Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#381

Post by DeathArrow »

Auracle wrote: post #276
P_I_Staker wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can have just as much fun at the TGI Friday's at your local strip mall as you can at the hippest restaurant no one else has ever heard of in Brooklyn. It's just a matter of who you spend that time with, and how you perceive that time, in the Stoic tradition. It's not just about restaurants. I'm not going to be able to go to concerts or events. There will be no specialized stores. Even in the example you gave, m…

How often do people actually go to concerts or events? Why do I need specialized stores if I have the internet? Eating out is expensive and generally not good for you, calorie-wise. Cities are fun, but people fail to realize that rural places are also pretty great. You just need to make your own fun, but you actually have the room (and money) to do so. I can go out in my yard and do archery, target shooting, etc. I l…

And what if you are not rich and you can't work for home? Would you spend hours per day commuting? That translates in loosing some years from your life.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#382

Post by talideon »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #128
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…

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…

> Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners.

This is just a self-defeating excuse. "Monopolised" implies that they're somehow preventing younger people from voting. The only way in which this is a thing is by scheduling elections on days that are inconvenient for younger people to vote.

If you want change in who represents you, the first thing you need to do is vote. The second thing is to get others to vote.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#383

Post by DeathArrow »

nervousvarun wrote: post #205
parthdesai wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or at least in North America, younger people don't want to live in soulless suburbs where there's literally nothing to do apart from visiting the same big box stores, chain restaurants and bars in exactly same looking plaza.

Until they get married/have kids and do the same thing their parents and their parent's parents did...move to the suburbs. One difference with "younger" kids now is they're getting married later...but once you have kids the suburbs look completely different and it's been that way for as long as there have been suburbs.

But how much time you have to spend in traffic each day?

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#384

Post by hgomersall »

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…

If there's a finite resource, you can't just say "if only the population worked harder, they'd have more money to spend so they can buy the thing we're discussing". Money is used as the tool to ration in our society, but it doesn't therefore mean that insufficient money is the problem behind rationing. This financializing of everything is the problem with too many analyses these days - fundamentally we need to think about provisioning before financing.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#385

Post by badpun »

Detrytus wrote: post #180
thriftwy wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing is that Russia and China are capitalistic now, and they both manage to output a huge amount of high rise housing for sale. Makes one wonder whether capitalism is actually compatible with democracy.

If you believe Karl Marx then the answer is no: capitalism is incompatible with democracy, because of the basic human nature. If you allow people to vote, they will vote to take money from the rich and give it to them for free. Or for government to create money out of thin air, and give them away.

Karl was proven wrong recently by the Swiss though, who voted against UBI in a referendum.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#386

Post by marvin »

jraedisch wrote: post #379
DeathArrow wrote: post #372

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…

How would you incentivize people to have children?

Make it seem to be profitable, obviously. France’s system is genius - supposedly, income can be shared between all household members regardless of age.

So the marginal tax rate becomes very low if you have three kids. Even incentivizes one parent to work less.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#387

Post by Gareth321 »

talideon wrote: post #382
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…

> Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners. This is just a self-defeating excuse. "Monopolised" implies that they're somehow preventing younger people from voting. The only way in which this is a thing is by scheduling elections on days that are inconvenient for younger people to vote. If you want change in who represents you, the first thing you need to do is vote. The secon…

While true, check out this demographic map for the US: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...). The majority of people are over the age of 30, and most of them live in owner-occupied homes. In fact, 66% of all Americans live in owner-occupied homes. I imagine these statistics look similar or even worse in the UK.

There is a real demographic advantage for the elderly, and those who own homes, even if we ignore the propensity for young people to fail to vote.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#388

Post by tomaytotomato »

To summarise:

- Lack of political willpower either due to competing priorities, or lobbying

- Banks and economy are tightly coupled to UK housing market

- Lots of people aren't willing to move to less desirable areas

- Lots of people want a McMansion with little/no maintenance

- Since WW2 we have been dependant on lumber from outside the UK for timber frame constructions. Its less so nowadays, but still a reason.

- Immigration + low supply = demand = profit!

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#389

Post by Qwertious »

thwarted wrote: post #318
bobthepanda wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that large developers love restricting development because it limits competition. If there is only a limited supply of land to build further on, it is much easier to corner said market of land and sit on it if the prices are not high enough for your liking. The cheapest development is the kind that larger developers do not bother with (one house to two or three on a single plot of land, rather than large…

This is not the case in SF. Developers want to build, but entrenched interests fight and delay, often using the rhetoric that doing so only makes developers richer and the only reason developers want to develop is so the developers themselves make money (as if this is some kind of purity test of intent).

As much as I hate giving NIMBYs any credit, it's important to remember that developers don't want to lower the price of housing - they want to make money, but the higher the cost of housing the more profit they make.

For instance, suppose they build 100 apartments in the suburb of X. They know that for every $1k the price of housing in X drops, they lose $100k. So weirdly, they tend to leave housing vacant and sell it at a drip-feed so that they're always selling less houses than there are buyers - there is a huge difference between selling 3 apartments to 4 buyers, vs selling 4 apartments to 4 buyers. This particularly bad when there are few, large developers instead of lots of small developers, as the few large developers can collude to price-fix much easier.

Please don't interpret this as contradicting the fact that California needs to massively overhaul its zoning/construction permit system - the fact that it can take years to receive permission instead of weeks is a big reason for the price of housing (and raises capex requirements which results in fewer but larger developers, see previous paragraph). Ditto for all the zoning that mandates exclusively single-family homes, and other such pointless exclusionism.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#390

Post by marvin »

DeathArrow wrote: post #375
mmarq wrote: post #334

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. 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.

Welcome to the beautiful world of empty, overconfident political promises that are smashed against the rocks of reality 30 years later.

This is why I plan to finance my own retirement and consider a minimum social security pension a happy bonus.

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