23, back from travelling, and can't afford a house in London

GunJack

westernpromise wrote: »

The clue is to look at what industries actually manage to pay some tax. Rather than punishing them with taxes to fund stupid flights of statist fancy, why not do something to encourage them?

the likes of amazon, google, starbucks, etc. need no encouragement NOT to pay their fair taxes...

kabayiri

westernpromise wrote: »

...
The clue is to look at what industries actually manage to pay some tax. Rather than punishing them with taxes to fund stupid flights of statist fancy, why not do something to encourage them?

China is ploughing between $5bn to $8bn in each of 16 core research sectors.

I suppose you would consider that statist fantasy.

I suggest it is about having a vision of being one of the pre-eminent players in the world of tomorrow.

I have absolutely no doubt that within a generation we will be used to the idea of Chinese made airliners and luxury transport.

westernpromise

The USSR ploughed a lot of money into technology and look how well that worked. The Chinese know that if it doesn't work, they won't get voted out and they can always steal what they need anyway, like they do now.

GreatApe

The state will have some success because nothing is 100% inefficient

The problem is large state industries in the past have tended towards extreme inefficacy and turn more into political lobbying groups rather than industry. For instance the steel plant I used to work at had 30,000 workers at one point this was reduced to 3500 workers once it was privatised the output also increased.

Zero_Sum

westernpromise wrote: »

It's entirely accurate to assume that northerners are poor.

It's not as though people in the northwest can afford to pay £500k for a 2-bed terrace, but cannily choose not to do so. The fact is that almost nobody can raise £500, never mind £500k. Northerners like to applaud themselves for their own thrift of course, but that's because poverty demands thrift.

Property prices tell you everything. If an area is poverty-stricken, house prices will be low, because nobody can afford to pay more than fourpence ha'penny for their house. As GreatApe keeps reminding us, in places like Stoke, a mortgage is less than a social rent, which can only happen if the social renters can't afford to save for a deposit out of what's left after they've paid for their social rent, their roll-ups and their whippet food.

Some areas are poverty-stricken but still have high house prices, such as Cornwall or Suffolk. The locals are skint, but property prices in places like Zennor or Southwold are through the roof. Why is that? Because although the locals haven't a bean, and there are no jobs, there are visitors who do, because the area is desirable.

Hence the price tells you everything. If a place is worth living in and you can get a well-paid job there the property price will reflect it. If it's a poverty-stricken beauty spot property prices will be high because of incomers. If it is skint and unattractive property prices will obviously be low because nobody's going to bid houses up.

Here's a 4-bedroom terrace in Newcastle:
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-53551476.html

Here's a very similar 4-bedroom terrace in Dulwich:
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-53578770.html

One is 12 times the price of the other. If anyone would care to believe that the dump in Newcastle is better because it's cheap, and that the locals could easily afford to pay 12 times more but are simply too smart, well, that may be why London is an international city and Newcastle isn't.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/11142074/London-is-most-desirable-global-city-to-move-to-for-work.html
More workers around the world want to come to London than any other city, a major survey has found, despite the fact it is now the most expensive place to live and work in the world.

A poll of 200,000 people in 189 countries found that nearly one in six want to come to the capital to work, ahead of New York and Paris.

People from the provinces often think their province is wonderful but that's because living in the provinces has left them with low standards.

Apart from that house is not in Newcastle.
Are you one of these thick sountherners who thinks the whole of the North East is 'Newcastle'?