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Why Britain doesn’t build

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Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#421

Post by chongli »

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…

Grandma, living in the same house she’s lived in since 1972, collecting a fixed income pension cheque once a month, is not what I’d describe as a “rich person.”

Look instead to the people who own golf courses, sports stadiums, super yachts, private jets and the like.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#422

Post by chongli »

parthdesai wrote: post #264
nervousvarun wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This often comes up, and I'm genuinely curious, is space really that much more important when it comes to kids? I grew up in an apartment sharing a bedroom with my sister, and tons and tons of kids grow up in an apartment all over the world; all the older European cities, Asian cities (Mumbai, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc). Netherlands has the happiest kids in the world, where in Amsterdam a lot of kids would be growing…

The U.S. doesn’t generally build a lot of multi-bedroom apartments suitable for families. The emphasis is on single bedrooms and studios.

Furthermore, people also prefer the suburbs for raising a family because that’s where all the nice schools are built. For better or worse, inner city schools are avoided like the plague for parents with the means to buy a house in the suburbs.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#423

Post by alistairSH »

youngtaff wrote: post #347
alistairSH wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the UK not have any equivalent of the US “motor voter” system? When we update our info at the department of motor vehicles, there’s a checkbox on the form to automatically register to vote. So getting on the register is mostly automatic once you have the paperwork in order to get a driver’s license (which is a necessity to function as an adult in most of the US).

Every household gets sent a form once a year to register those people who are eligible to vote - ours is pre-populated with details of the current registrants

Thanks. I assumed there was something in place, and that the post above mine was a bit off the wall.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#424

Post by carlosjobim »

lucideer wrote: post #48
robertlagrant wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: I originally said Britain built 30k houses last year, which commenters have corrected. Thank you! I don't really understand all this. Surely the main reason for a lack of housing is the difference between house demand (e.g. Britain took in 606k people in net immigration last year) compared to house supply (Britain built I think around 200k houses last year). The state shouldn't need to build houses (in fact it…

> The state shouldn't need to build houses (in fact it doesn't; it just uses your tax money to pay private companies to build houses). It should just make the building and zoning rules simple enough that it's possible to make money from building houses and selling them, and let people get on with it. This is the modern wisdom in the west - it's the approach taken by many governments since the Reagan era (not just in…

Most men have the capability to build a house themselves and with help of friends. What is needed is the release of land, plain and simple. The landed gentry have enormous amounts of real estate and they want high prices to release any part - this is their retirement plan for them, their children, and children's children.

Let workers buy land cheap and you will have a lower base level of housing cost, bringing the cost for all other housing down. Why would I want the government to rob me to build a house, when I could have built it myself if I hadn't been robbed?

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#425

Post by Nextgrid »

hsjqllzlfkf wrote: post #45
danjac wrote: post #26

This is an interesting political trap for the ruling Conservatives that they have made for themselves. The traditional Conservative voter is a home-owner. So you might be a rabid socialist in your youth, but once you get a job, save up for a deposit, and buy your own home, you eventually transition to become yet another middle-aged Tory voter. That pipeline is now broken - young people are unable to save up for their…

Sounds like a problem that will fix itself? According to you, do nothing and the Tories will be out.

The problem is the gerontocracy as well as incompetence, lack of accountability if not outright corruption in some cases. The current system doesn't have adequate safeguards to defend against these issues and the problem will persist, Tories or not.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#426

Post by Nextgrid »

cbeach wrote: post #362

In the UK, property developers are forced by the govt to build a certain proportion of social housing into their developments, or to subsidise the building of social housing elsewhere. Obviously, this means the high end property is less desirable (because big spenders are forced to live next-door to social housing tenants). And the social housing built will be boxy and low standard, so again, less desirable, and unpr…

Social housing doesn't have to be bad. It has a (justified) bad reputation because of the crime and antisocial behavior it brings along, which it can do because law enforcement has completely dropped the ball. Social housing can be fine as long as any antisocial behavior is properly addressed by criminal prosecution and evicting problematic tenants.

The problem is that isn't happening in practice, and property managers themselves can't do anything about it (dissuasive measures such as CCTV no longer work from my experience, as in my building people from the "affordable" area - or their friends - are happily vandalizing doors and stealing mail in full view of the CCTV).

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#427

Post by nsteel »

esskay wrote: post #336

Like a lot of things in Britain there's a chronic lack of development, and a 'pass the buck' trend. Our water infrastructure is another prime example. There's been no real investment in decades and the system we have in place was designed for a population in the 1950s. As a result our reserves are woefully inadiquate, resulting in the annual 'hose pipe ban'. The rhetoric around it has changed recently though. Accordi…

I'm not sure we have the ability to just build a new city from scratch. They already tried to build New Towns and politics got in the way, as detailed further in the article.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#428

Post by ericd »

ilyt wrote: post #395
ericd wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like maybe they didn’t pay in enough - baby boom demographics meant there were relatively more productive workers paying for relatively few old people, so each worker was paying a fraction of what it would cost to carry themselves through old age. Also, not enough kids, and of those, not enough who wanted to go into medicine. It seems like baby booms have a way of making things seem artificially good for a w…

> It seems like maybe they didn’t pay in enough - baby boom demographics meant there were relatively more productive workers paying for relatively few old people, so each worker was paying a fraction of what it would cost to carry themselves through old age. Right but manufacturing technology better and more efficient, we produce far more "per worker" now

Yeah, but I don’t think we’ve seen commensurate gains with healthcare workers, except by perhaps reducing visit time per patient.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#429

Post by klyrs »

WalterBright wrote: post #320
klyrs wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to cherrypick a single example to rebut the existence of an overarching trend in the UK, you could at least pick a state with an income tax. Or, perhaps, not beat the dead horse at all and talk about Britain.

Washington state just decided that capital gains were not income, and imposed a 7% tax on them. Besides, I don't see how the age demographics in Wa state would be materially different from Britain's.

If you're so fixated on Washington state, you should really learn its history. And also British history. They're very different places with very different politics. You're comparing a flyover state (speaking as somebody born there) to the center of a colonial power.

And a 7% flat tax is a trifle.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#430

Post by Detrytus »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #270
tmnvix wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess that few countries have the type of situation that exists in the US where a driver's licence is almost essential in order to go about daily life. Many people in the UK don't bother with a licence. It can be prohibitively expensive when you consider the costs of lessons, a vehicle, and of the licence itself.

Many people in the UK don't bother with a licence. Eh. "Many" is such a vague term. Like, 5% could be considered many. UK is a driving country, period. where a driver's licence is almost essential in order to go about daily life. This is true in all highly developed countries if you live outside the largest cities. You need to drive. It is baked in the cost of your life. Renting is much cheaper outside of the city, b…

Such problems only exist in third world countries, such as US or UK.

My country solves this by issuing a plastic ID card to each citizen. You apply for it at your local town hall, and it is free of charge. You can use that ID for voting, or any other interaction with the government when they need to confirm your identity. Hell, they even issued a smartphone application recently, that can be legally used as ID.

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