The UK really shat the bed since the 2008 financial crisis, huh.
Job vacancies surge past one million in new record
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Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record
#72This reminds me of David Graeber's story on how during one of the pandemics, a plague killed so many people in the UK that those who left got rich by inheriting land and by increasing wages, as there was no one to work. In the case of UK there was a superstorm of Brexit, IR35 change, and pandemic all in one - adding to the issue for employers. But in a way, I do not see this as an issue but a chance to equalize wealt…
theres another option, some of those jobs go elsewhere
Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record
#73Housing is anything from a third to 50% of the average UK earners take home income. Median house price to median income ratios are at historically high levels[0], and rents are now also rising[1] Either wages need to rise or house prices need to fall. [0] If you look at somewhere mundane like Essex the median 'affordability ratio', as measured by the Office of National Statistics ( https://tinyurl.com/x5jatcx8 ), was…
Inflation will make any increase in wages meaningless. It will also further drive investment into housing to escape the free falling cash. The answer is no lockdowns, no bailouts, and no quantitative money printing to oblivion. Let the everything bubble pop and start over with sound first principles. We will get there, but not before politicians make it worse and delay the inevitable defaults.
Agreed. 20 years of lower and lower interest rates, meaning higher and higher mortgage amounts have driven up prices into oblivion. Either these prices are inflated away or there is a collapse. There's not much else you can, UK housing market is so far from market reality that it's a joke.
And ironically the more you create policies like lower deposit amounts for younger people, or subsidised mortgage payments, the more you drive up house prices making these policies hurt the next generation of young people more.
Perfect example of government intervention making things worse creating more government intervention etc etc
Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record
#74Housing is anything from a third to 50% of the average UK earners take home income. Median house price to median income ratios are at historically high levels[0], and rents are now also rising[1] Either wages need to rise or house prices need to fall. [0] If you look at somewhere mundane like Essex the median 'affordability ratio', as measured by the Office of National Statistics ( https://tinyurl.com/x5jatcx8 ), was…
Inflation will make any increase in wages meaningless. It will also further drive investment into housing to escape the free falling cash. The answer is no lockdowns, no bailouts, and no quantitative money printing to oblivion. Let the everything bubble pop and start over with sound first principles. We will get there, but not before politicians make it worse and delay the inevitable defaults.
The answer is to control the housing market and stop it being used an investment against inflation. Force people to invest in industry against inflation - not rent-seeking in housing, or cryptocurrency pyramid schemes.
Only allow resident citizens to own the one property they live in, and have the government handle rentals like the old council housing / Folkhemmet homes.
Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record
#75If you want to create jobs, start a pandemic. Over a hunderd thousand jobs were created for testing, contact tracing and vaccinations in my small European country.
If we’re going to be that cynical, we could just pay people to dig holes in the ground and fill them back up again.
We don’t do that, for good reason.
Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inflation will make any increase in wages meaningless. It will also further drive investment into housing to escape the free falling cash. The answer is no lockdowns, no bailouts, and no quantitative money printing to oblivion. Let the everything bubble pop and start over with sound first principles. We will get there, but not before politicians make it worse and delay the inevitable defaults.
The answer is to control the housing market and stop it being used an investment against inflation. Force people to invest in industry against inflation - not rent-seeking in housing, or cryptocurrency pyramid schemes. Only allow resident citizens to own the one property they live in, and have the government handle rentals like the old council housing / Folkhemmet homes.
I think the political will here is kind of weak...the voters who own housing dont want their asset to decrease in value and wont vote for politicians who want to force investment into industry, versus the renters who do.
I am not sure what to suggest...
Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record
#77Good. Wages must be forced up. You can’t have a modern economy without a capitalized middle class. Real estate is so ludicrous we need quite a bit of inflation to make it reasonable again. The alternative would be a deflationary crash where real estate crashes and obliterates everyone’s home equity, but that is far more painful to virtually everyone.
> Real estate is so ludicrous we need quite a bit of inflation to make it reasonable again. Alternatively, we could invest in rural areas and other left-behind areas ("flyover states" in the US, Eastern Germany in Germany). Right now, the infrastructure there is flat-out unable to sustain quality modern human life unless you're Amish and fine with travelling on horseback: no high speed internet, no public transport,…
That sounds like a recipe for suburban housing sprawl, which is what you get in North America when people start moving en masse to a rural area, and it's expensive on infrastructure and unsustainable from a climate perspective.
Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record
#78I am curious when the UK will be less strict with worker visas again for European workers after Brexit. It seems the UK has way more economic issues during this phase of the pandemic than mainland EU. On the mainland there are no empty supermarkets, or farms not being able to harvest because of labour shortages. So it seems to be a Brexit issue. But if they allow more European workers again, what was then the point of Brexit? I would hate to be in the shoes of Boris Johnson.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/aug/25/business-le...
Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record
#79Housing is anything from a third to 50% of the average UK earners take home income. Median house price to median income ratios are at historically high levels[0], and rents are now also rising[1] Either wages need to rise or house prices need to fall. [0] If you look at somewhere mundane like Essex the median 'affordability ratio', as measured by the Office of National Statistics ( https://tinyurl.com/x5jatcx8 ), was…
Inflation will make any increase in wages meaningless. It will also further drive investment into housing to escape the free falling cash. The answer is no lockdowns, no bailouts, and no quantitative money printing to oblivion. Let the everything bubble pop and start over with sound first principles. We will get there, but not before politicians make it worse and delay the inevitable defaults.
That sounds a lot like if we just do what we have been doing for the last couple hundred years it will all work out. But we have a couple hundred years of evidence of who it works out for and who it does not.
Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record
#80I guess on the one hand businesses aren't paying enough. But I mean, business owners aren't all just evil conspiring anti-labor types. They're in it for the profits and would pay more if they could eek out a reasonable return on investment. On a deeper level, you have all these zombie-businesses now supported by government handouts and terribly low interest rates. The zombie businesses soak up labor for relatively less-productive pursuits.