Expensive = Good?

Turnbull2000

Don't be daft!

Independent - Our distorted priortities are ruining the economy

The price of food is rocketing up while the price of housing is beginning to rocket down. The strange thing is that both the up and the down are considered to be serious cause for concern. You might think that if not having enough money to buy food is considered a disaster, then not being able to afford a roof over your head must run it a close second.

But that isn't the way we look at it in this country. Read the papers, listen to the TV commentators and you will notice that to a man or to a woman they all of them regard a fall in the value of houses as not just a worrying factor in itself but something that adversely affects the welfare of our economy as a whole.

The logic of such a consensus is that we ought to be happy if houses go on getting more and more expensive, with a resulting growth in the economy and the general prosperity of all.

Perhaps economists sincerely believe this. But to the lay observer it looks like madness. It also ignores the practical consequences of saddling couples with a massive amount of debt, forcing them to spend the rest of their lives working themselves to the bone in order to repay it.

This is already happening, but there are apparently large numbers of people who want to preserve that status quo and possibly to make life even more difficult for couples than it is at present.

If that is the principle on which our economic system works, no wonder it is in a terrible mess.

PasturesNew

I have just made a pledge to stop eating rice for the rest of this year.

HALF the world's poorest people rely on rice as their only/main food source. And now they can't afford it.

If the western world stop eating rice just for a year it would help!

So that's dried rice, pot rice, rice with curries at a meal out ... and coco pops. For starters.

I was just wondering whether a thread had been started on a main board yet to suggest everybody on MSE gives up rice and all rice-based products to ease the situation maybe.

I think the price of rice for poor people is more important than how posh our house is... or it should be!