Work or be homeless!

michaels

SN I don't quite follow your arguement about land being different from other assets.

Suppose I own an acre of land worth 100k - unless I was making money from it from farming or renting the house on it out or whatever then I wouldn't keep it, I'd sell up and put the money in the bank wher eI would be earning some interest.

Now suppose I had money in the bank earning 5% but I could buy that acre of land for 100k and get 10k in rent - of course I would buy the land - but everyone else would see the same benefit so the price of land would be bid up to 200k so the return was 5% as well.

So the price of land is driven by the rents achievable rather than the other way around. So why do rents in this country support such high land prices? Consider my situation, I have a wife and young family and I have to have somewhere for them to live so I will pay whatever I have to have somewhere for them to live (inelastic demand as the economists would say) - however much the rents rise I will still pay, giving up other things instead. With most things like cars if lots of people want to buy something and the price rises there is an opportunity to make more of the thing more cheaply than people are willing to pay for it so more get made until there is a balance between the amount being made and the amount wanted.

But something funny happens with houses. The cost of putting up a house is not nearly as much as the hose is worth when built, instead the land where a house can be built goes up in value.If al he land was built on this would make sense but of course there is lots of land that is not built on but planning rules artificially prevent this happening. Thus those who have land that can be built on make a big profit but as discussed above this does not really affect the value of all land as land which can not be used for housing is not affected.

The net effect of all this is that as the economy expands and people become richer their is a tendancy for house prices to rise disproportionately as people can then afford to pay more for the housing essential. However this gain does not go only to the land owner as the capital gain is taxed so the whole of society shares in this 'windfall'

If anyone is still reading my solution is to relax planning restrictions but only in return for meaningful payments towards the extra infrastructure (in my area that would mean a contribution towards, road and rail upgrades, schools, doctors surgeries etc) and that the capital gains tax exemption for private residences be withdrawn at the same as stamp duty.

michaels

Back to the original topic of the thread, I have never understood why council housing is never withdrawn when tenants are able to afford private provision. I am sure there are many people paying subsidised council rents who are now earning much more than others who are struggling to pay private rents but who never qualified for councl housing. How is this fair?

Jonbvn

clutton wrote: »

"" Given the above, the only option is to (deservedly) abuse you. ""

i dont think it is at all deserved to abuse someone - just because we dont agree with their views
....

Sorry but I did NOT write that we should abuse SN because we disagreed with him. My complaint is that SN presents his opinions as FACTS! This does not allow reasonable debate. SN then resorts to re-presenting the same idea continuously. This is just mob politics, and deserves derision.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do (say) nothing!.

Dithering_Dad

Jonbvn wrote: »

Sorry but I did NOT write that we should abuse SN because we disagreed with him. My complaint is that SN presents his opinions as FACTS! This does not allow reasonable debate. SN then resorts to re-presenting the same idea continuously. This is just mob politics, and deserves derision.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do (say) nothing!.

Jon, I'd give it up as a bad job (same message to everyone else). I can have a better discussion with our mantlepiece, and get much more sense out of it.

I mean, how can you have a reasonable discussion with anyone who argues that "when the housing crash of 2010 occurs, we will all live in army camps, where any old or frail people who catch colds and cannot work, will be killed" are absolute, incontrovertable facts.

Seriously, you'd get more out of talking to my boxer dog about how to resolve the Arab, Israeli conflict than you'd get out of SN discussing what rain is made from.

Debating with SN is an exercise in futility. :rolleyes:

scorpio13

SquatNow wrote: »

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&forumID=4222&edition=1&ttl=20080206014924


Most Popular Response to the BBC HYS item:

So when people lose their homes due to repossession, putting them in mass accomodation wont be as unpopular as some might imagine.

I'm sure Ms Flint was only making noise to distract from other problems in government, but, lets face it, the response from the public wasn't as negative as you would have expected.

My original story for anyone that cares: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=608253

I think it's a disgrace 'forcing' people to take jobs they don't want to do.........especially when most of the time they'll be worse off than when they were unemployed!

The government don't care about people's personal/financial situations.

All they care about is making the unemployed statistics look better.:mad:

Generali

scorpio13 wrote: »

I think it's a disgrace 'forcing' people to take jobs they don't want to do.........especially when most of the time they'll be worse off than when they were unemployed!

The government don't care about people's personal/financial situations.

All they care about is making the unemployed statistics look better.:mad:

I think the point isn't that people are forced to do work they don't want to do, more that they can't expect to rely on the largesse of the taxpayer forever.

If you don't want to work, save up a load of money and don't work. That's my plan in my current job.

clutton_2

"""when the housing crash of 2010 occurs, we will all live in army camps, where any old or frail people who catch colds and cannot work, will be killed"

i'd clearly missed this little gem - else maybe i might not have given SN the benefit of the doubt ......

tom558

michaels wrote: »

Back to the original topic of the thread, I have never understood why council housing is never withdrawn when tenants are able to afford private provision. I am sure there are many people paying subsidised council rents who are now earning much more than others who are struggling to pay private rents but who never qualified for councl housing. How is this fair?

Subsidised council rents?, I think you assume all council tenants are on full housing benefit.
For those of us who pay full rent, that rent increases by more than twice inflation each and every year.
I wonder if you would consider yourself subsidised,if your housing costs increased by that much each year.

Gorgeous_George

michaels wrote: »

Back to the original topic of the thread, I have never understood why council housing is never withdrawn when tenants are able to afford private provision. I am sure there are many people paying subsidised council rents who are now earning much more than others who are struggling to pay private rents but who never qualified for councl housing. How is this fair?

The unemployed include many kinds of people.

There are those who are temporarily unemployed and between jobs. There are those who cannot work because they are unemployable - no company can afford to employ them for whatever reason. There are those who choose to be unemployed because they 'earn' more that way, some of these people work for 'cash-in-hand' to supplement their benefits.

Other perks to being unemployed include free precriptions, free dental care, Housing Benefit, Council Tax benefit, no need to run a car to work each day. Now you want them to have exclusive access to social housing.

It's about time those who choose work were rewarded for their sicial conscience.

GG

lotto-dreamer

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

Jon, I'd give it up as a bad job (same message to everyone else). I can have a better discussion with our mantlepiece, and get much more sense out of it.

I mean, how can you have a reasonable discussion with anyone who argues that "when the housing crash of 2010 occurs, we will all live in army camps, where any old or frail people who catch colds and cannot work, will be killed" are absolute, incontrovertable facts.

Seriously, you'd get more out of talking to my boxer dog about how to resolve the Arab, Israeli conflict than you'd get out of SN discussing what rain is made from.

Debating with SN is an exercise in futility. :rolleyes:

With all due respect, I don't think SN is entirely serious -but he did write an interesting science fiction type story of what could happen - I suppose much like George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' or '1984' and I guess they laughed at HG Wells for his stories as well......

I don't pretend to have any in depth knowledge of economics (I wouldn't be spending time on the DFW forum if I did :rolleyes: ) but it's interesting reading different points of view even if they rattle everyone.