Rent Controls - The Swedish Experience

Mistermeaner

The more governments get involved in stuff the worse they become. Fact.

Just as a trial it would be interesting to go to a no government, zero taxes and zero public services model

What would happen - we're not all animals so I doubt we'll eat each other and I'm some enterprising souls will pop up to offer things we might need like police and fireman, for a fair price of course.

HappyMJ

Mistermeaner wrote: »

The more governments get involved in stuff the worse they become. Fact.

Just as a trial it would be interesting to go to a no government, zero taxes and zero public services model

What would happen - we're not all animals so I doubt we'll eat each other and I'm some enterprising souls will pop up to offer things we might need like police and fireman, for a fair price of course.

The cost of medical care would be cost prohibitive for the elderly and those with lifelong conditions whilst healthy non-smoking adults in their 20's and 30's would hardly pay anything. If medical insurers charged people in their 20's and 30's more to offset the cost of caring for the elderly and those with the lifelong conditions they'd refuse to take it out and self insure instead.

Generali

zagubov wrote: »

It seems very strange to me that some people pay money to rent a house from people who pay that money to rent the bank's money to "own" the house. It just seems there's at least one step too many.

Don't forget that a lot of people that rent do so with other people's money, I.e. via taxes. They aren't really paying rent, taxpayers are doing so on their behalf.

Fella

Perhaps it's been discussed here before but I'd missed that Corbyn likes the idea of extending Right To Buy to private tenants:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8e9aff38-3a91-11e5-bbd1-b37bc06f590c.html#axzz3lDNNBcF5

Seems to me that politicians of all colours have decided that rather than try to fix the housing problem, having a bash at BTL landlords is both easier & (they think) more politically rewarding. And we all know that MPs love nothing better than having a go-to group they can savage on Question Time each week for some guaranteed cheap applause (witness how most of them have spent the last 7 years blaming bankers for everything).

Mistermeaner

2 words: planning permission

Fix planning and everything will follow.

My devout labour parents annoy me no end, preaching how unfair society is because of the cost of housing for the young (and telling me that a Labour government will make EVERYTHING fairer) while both receiving large final salary pensions they did not contribute appropriately to, living in a big empty house they don't need, and using their abundant free time to form protest groups to block any possibility of house building within a 10 mile radius of their home.

Don't get me wrong I'm not a Boomer hater, and I joke on here but of course love my parents but their view is typical of large swathes of the population.

They are certainly alright jack, they are not selfish people (both volunteer for all sorts both charity and local council etc) and genuinely want a better and fairer (whatever that means) world for their grand kids and society at large but as a always with socialists it's somebody else's responsibility to pay or make sacrifice and they don't see the contradiction in their behaviour vs their outlook.

I've suggested they should voluntarily give large portions of their money to the poor and also take in a couple of families to their home. They should also get together with their pals and campaign for more house building near them.

These ideas of course get laughed off the table because it's somebody else's job to do those things

michaels

zagubov wrote: »

It seems very strange to me that some people pay money to rent a house from people who pay that money to rent the bank's money to "own" the house. It just seems there's at least one step too many.

I have rented from private landlords because I did not know how long I wanted to live some where or knew I only wanted to live there short term.

It would seem very strange to me if the only way to move out of my parents house would have been to buy somewhere to live....

Generali

Mistermeaner wrote: »

using their abundant free time to form protest groups to block any possibility of house building within a 10 mile radius of their home.

This sums up the British approach to housing policy: build the houses somewhere that I don't live. It's ludicrous.

martinsurrey

Generali wrote: »

This sums up the British approach to housing policy: build the houses somewhere that I don't live. It's ludicrous.

even more ludicrous,

"build the houses somewhere that I don't live, AND not on any anything green, as I like green things, AND not on anything brown as the towns and cities are too congested..."

Cloud and Sea houses for everyone!