> It's not clear who has an availability of money. I'm aware of zero people within recent years buying a home without a mortgage. Availability of money has never been worse.
"Availability of money" includes the ability to apply for, and service the debt on, a mortgage.
> I don't think we're seeing 4x the living standard of 1970. It also doesn't explain that we see house prices increase by more than 4x relative to wages [1].
I don't remember 1970, but there's no particular reason we should expect to have 4x living standard.. competition for housing can eat up a much bigger slice of the overall pie, as long as people are willing to compete.
> But this would defend what I said, that demand outstrips supply. There is a saying at auctions: "it's only worth what somebody else is willing to pay for it."
100% - but if nobody CAN pay (the asking price), nobody will be willing to pay it. And that's where positional goods matter, because effectively people are jostling for a place in a ranked queue. The prices are a function of "how much money are the people in the queue able and willing to raise and deploy". And so it's natural to have situations where incomes might only go up by 50%, but house prices can rise MUCH more if interest rates are low and the bulk of that extra income is discretionary.
> It's not working, the NHS is failing. Where I live I cannot get an appointment any more. If I am lucky the doctor calls me and essentially prescribes anything I ask for. I recently saw a similar situation with midwifery.
Bad here too, but most of the staff are immigrants or of immigrant background so I find it hard to blame that on migration, it'd be a lot worse if they turned the taps off. It's more to do with our population (native Brits and 1960s/70s immigrants) being elderly, unhealthy and generally decrepit, and a health service that tries to do too much. It excels at keeping people alive, but it sucks at keeping them healthy.
> We are now at the state where children are deferred from starting school because there just are no place
Not the case here, in a high-immigration area: they're actually closing primary schools because there aren't enough kids to fill them.
> I don't think that is fair, the answer isn't to build on every square metre of the UK until it's gone. Besides, if they get rid of the train station car park, where will all the commuters park? (I've seen this one play out, they park everywhere else.)
They should walk or take the bus. I'm talking about stations that are at most a mile or so spread out and usually served by half a dozen bus routes, suburban zone 3 & 4 London. Wouldn't work further out where distances are longer.