Brexit, The Economy and House Prices (Part 2)

GreatApe

Rusty_Shackleton wrote: »

Greatape, youre talking a lot about stats of wealth that are overall, and dont take into account distribution.

only crazy people believe the average person was better off in the past

When ive discussed with people in my life who are in my parents generation they dont remember what milk and bread cost 30 years ago

just as well we have information on costs of food going back many decades

they describe what they used to do in their lives and could afford, while also owning their first houses.

almost by definition if in the past you could afford a house you were richer than most other people

1951 less than 30% owned their own home, why do you need to go further than that? If life was so easy and wealth so high back then why did so few own their own home?

Also, money that was once spent on more expensive clothes (which incidentally fostered a more mend and make do attitude in most)

More nonsense, people didnt buy better quality cloths and mend them they had !!!! quality and mended them (or continued to wear them unmended) as they couldn't afford much else.

Go back a little further to the early part of the 1900s and lots of people were so poor they couldn't buy shoes for their children

has probably just diverted to technology and leisure activities, where spending had gone up drastically

.

fantastic we are richer so can spend more on pretty much everything

The only thing my parents in particular comment on is how much more my generation spend on eating out, for them takeaways and restaurants were far rarer, ill grant you that.

Not just that, we consume more meat than they did and other energy dense foods like eggs more than they did. In the past people consumed more bread and potatoes much lower in protein hence why they are shorties

Now, either these people, from diverse backgrounds and in different areas of the country (i grew up in SE, now in NE) are collectively lying, or theyre all remembering fairly accurately and youre wrong. Hmm, whats more likely?

They are not collectively saying the same thing Ive already noted that my parents grand parents and great grand parents all told me how much harder it was

What about the census results that show only 29.5% of people owned their own home in 1951 whats that about?

Also, stop with the homelessness is primarily due to addiction spiel.

homelessness is primarily due to dysfunctional individuals, very often addiction.

Unless you can provide some evidence for such a damning accusation.

Just look into their eyes

Which you cant,

I was about to type I am sure there are some who are functional adults that have fallen on bad things, but I changed my mind those are too few to even count. The vast majority are addicts and the remainder are dysfunctional in other ways

because its absolutely false.

Why would a functional adult be homeless? (Even plenty of dysfunctional adults are homed most of them are)

A lot of people are homeless because councils have a responsibility to house them and guess what... THEY DONT HAVE THE HOUSES, so many end up in temporary accommodation and B&Bs...

someone in a B&B is not homeless. Homeless = rough sleeping on the streets or in the park or under a brdige or in a car etc

In Peterborough i believe theyve recently bought a load of portacabin housing in to help deal with the problem!

If its for the addicts they wont care a lot of them even after given a roof and a bed go out to the streets its all they know

And its not due to 'no dss' landlords because landlords dont leave houses empty, so there are clearly lots of tenants that can rent privately. Honestly where have you got this idea that the majority of poor and homeless people are addicts?! Its literally ridiculoud, not even the daily mail comes out with quite so outrageous fiction.

poverty (or I should say low income as we dont have much true poverty in the uk) does not make people addicts or dysfunctional I know a lot of people on benefits or low incomes who live very fine lives.

However addiction and dysfunction makes people poor. The alcoholic I mentioned before he is not from a poor family but if his wife gives up on him (I would have given up on him 10 years ago) he will be on the streets or dead within 6 months

GreatApe

Rusty_Shackleton wrote: »

Greatape, while youre failing to find any evidence for your homelessness claims, heres some evidence against your claim:
House of commons library on (PDF) statutory homelessness (i.e. The official figures, which only include those who approach LAs for help... So the majority of them)

https://fullfact.org/economy/homelessness-uk/

Not a word about addiction. Bearly mention of the dysfubction you talk about. A lot of it is literally just can't afford somewhere to live, end of short tenancy, and family unable to provide support. Oh, and also lots of women and children escaping abuse.

women escaping abuse = dysfunctional family

'Around 58,000 households were accepted by councils as entitled to be housed in 2015/16'

That is a very low figure less than 1/4th of 1% of households so as I keep saying not a huge number

oh and some of it fake perhaps a lot of it is fake, an irish family renting one of my properties begged me to evict them so they become 'homeless' and would get a council house. I had purchased the property with them as sitting tenants. I didn't really want to do it but I did evict them (they wanted it) primarily because the husband for some bizarre reason had stockpiled a huge amount of wood in the house (I have absolutely no idea why) which he wouldnt get rid of and which was clearly a fire risk and just plain odd. It took me multiple skips to get rid of just the wood he left behind. They were never homeless but went through the motions including waiting for a bailiff.


what you need to look at is true homelessness, about 2-4 thousand people in England that are truly homeless (~0.006% of the population). A lot of them are 'repeat offenders' ie they get housed but go back on the streets like this lovely chap

GreatApe

Four out of five homeless people in Britain are regular drug-users - and almost half have used heroin or crack in the last month. The figures, far higher than previously acknowledged, have shocked homelessness experts.

One in four of Britain's homeless use cocaine or ecstasy, researchers found. One in three use tranquillisers. Only 4 per cent do not use either drugs or alcohol at all.

The research will confirm the view of the Government's controversial 'Homelessness Tsar', Louise Casey, that money given to beggars is often spent on drugs. In the run-up to Christmas 2000, Casey launched a campaign encouraging people not to give money to street sleepers.

Crisis researchers interviewed 400 homeless people at length who were either sleeping on the streets or temporarily living in hostels or emergency accommodation.

---

So Rusty next time you give them a pound to feel good, look into their eyes and try to spot the 4% that are not on drugs or alcohol.

Rusty_Shackleton

Greatape, youre talking about 1951 a lot, ive clearly said multiple times that my criticism is against the baby boomers, who certainly didnt own a house in the 50s!

Your definition of honelessness is completely wrong. Homeless people don't even include those sleeping rough. (government definitions btw, but since weve been talking about government policy and socioeconomic factors that should be a given.)

As for your take on those sleeping rough:yes there are serious drug problems there. However, its not necessarily what made them homeless. A majority of homeless people have serious mental health problems, and a lot are ex-forces.

GreatApe

Rusty_Shackleton wrote: »

Greatape, youre talking about 1951 a lot, ive clearly said multiple times that my criticism is against the baby boomers, who certainly didnt own a house in the 50s!

1971 ownership was just under 50% and that is with artificial rent controls and caps pushing people into ownership

2011 it was over 65% for the locals

1971 wages and incomes were much lower than today in real terms and yes food/cloths/necessities were still expensive in 1971 compared to today

GreatApe

1971 average wage £30 Dozen eggs 23p Bread 10p Milk 5p Chicken 46p

eggs cost 4.4x as much back then vs now, bread 2.3x milk 3.6x Chicken 3x

Looking at about 3x as much spent on feeding yourself in 1970 vs today.

Rusty_Shackleton

Actual food prices dont really mean much on their own - what did the average person spend on food in the past? We also consume far more calories than people did in the 70s. Bread and milk prices are meaningless.

buglawton

Everyone here has been defining 'better off' in strictly material terms. When in fact it's all about relative and social advantage. So in the old days no smartphones, but having just one landline phone in the family put that family at a huge advantage to a neighbour without. Major domestic appliances in the 60s were relatively expensive. But it was a really big thing to add an automatic washing machine to the household. Nowadays the sense of entitlement is so strong that if a major appliance breaks down it's an 'emergency' to get it replaced.

So if you are trying to measure 'better off' on material terms, you're getting it very wrong.

It's really all about a sense of equality, access to services and social mobility, if you want to compare today with the 50s/60s/70s.

gfplux

buglawton wrote: »

Everyone here has been defining 'better off' in strictly material terms. When in fact it's all about relative and social advantage. So in the old days no smartphones, but having just one landline phone in the family put that family at a huge advantage to a neighbour without. Major domestic appliances in the 60s were relatively expensive. But it was a really big thing to add an automatic washing machine to the household. Nowadays the sense of entitlement is so strong that if a major appliance breaks down it's an 'emergency' to get it replaced.

So if you are trying to measure 'better off' on material terms, you're getting it very wrong.

It's really all about a sense of equality, access to services and social mobility, if you want to compare today with the 50s/60s/70s.

There should be a thread for this.

Thrugelmir

gfplux wrote: »

There should be a thread for this.

Topics intertwine. Impossible to look at just one in isolation. Brexit is as much about what sort of place and culture the UK becomes to work and live. As much as anything else. The EC after all is itself a political beast. Not just economic.