The Off Topic Topic

[Tamas]

There's abuse of every facet of tax in every country. People insist on unnecessary medication and waste doctor's time. Soldiers steal gear from military warehouses.

Do you agree that council houses for people who can't afford to buy or rent privately is necessary? You have to soak up the odd piss-taker. Like benefits, it's nothing like as much as the tabloids would have you believe, though most people would agree that the system of council house for life and hereditary housing needs to be overhauled.

The UK still has one of the lowest levels of taxation for its GDP and thankfully few of the poorest fall through the cracks. By far the largest proportion of your tax goes on state pensions.

And at least we didn't have to get Jimmy Carter in to build houses.

http://www.habitatforhumanity.org.uk/Hungary

Yeah that was one example, and my answer is no, there should be no state involvement in housing, ideally. I would rather have minimal taxes and let charities/private business deal with these situations.

The UK has a dramatically low tax rate compared to what it offers. It also has a significant deficit as I understand, which is working here, due to London being the playground of global finance. Not sure it would be/will be attainable if said global finance jumps to New York and Frankfurt after the UK's EU exit.

[mongers]

Some awesome infographics about London. It may help explain some of the things I frequently bang on about, like ethnic mix, rent increases and lengthy commutes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29915801

Thanks for the excellent link. 

[Sheilbh]

That's a pointless poll. There is "duty to contribute" as in paying for the maintenance of police/army/etc. which I 100% support, and there is "duty to contribute" as in making sure people who don't need council housing can continue living in them, which is just bollocks. So, pointless poll is pointless.

As with all polls 'duty to contribute' means what ever the polled thinks it means. But I'd argue in asking a question about values/morals it's less useful to set up an option of things you like because, shockingly, most people would go for it.

Yeah that was one example, and my answer is no, there should be no state involvement in housing, ideally. I would rather have minimal taxes and let charities/private business deal with these situations.

There's lots of state involvement in housing in the supply area. Local councils have extensive powers over granting planning permission and they are the most keenly fought battles of local democracy (see the Tories attack ad on the UKIP MP in Rochester over his (misquoted) support of a housing development). Of course there's also state involvement in the infrastructure of most developments - generally local councils will 'adopt' the infrastructure built by developers and maintain it.

All of which is good and helps protect the rights and property of owners. Your house would be worth a lot less if you had to carry on paying for the maintenance of the road to it (which is common on new-builds until the council adopts the road) or that beautiful field behind you or quaint old corn house could be concreted over into a high-rise by any developer with the cash.

The state used to have a big role in demand too. Initially it kind of had to because noone else was able to clear slums on such a scale or, after the war, noone could even conceive far less afford to rebuild the housing stock destroyed by the blitz. Trouble is since right to buy and the general absence of new local authority building the private developers and housing associations haven't nearly managed to keep pace with demand :


Considering that right hand end of that graph has seen a period when the UK population's growing at quite a fast rate (on current trends in both countries we'll be bigger than Germany around 2050, as will France) and that London for example is almost at her peak population again (1930) it means we're not even building enough housing to keep up with population growth which is a problem.

I'm not sure what the answer is because it is tough to balance the needs of a growing population and people who don't own their own home against the rights and interest of property owners (who, incidentally, tend to be older and tend to be more likely to vote), but I think probably some degree of new council building is part of it.

Of course the alternative is that we try and move the jobs to where the housing is - ie the North and places like Weymouth, Southampton etc - but I don't see a way of doing that that doesn't also involve large-scale state involvement.

The UK has a dramatically low tax rate compared to what it offers. It also has a significant deficit as I understand, which is working here, due to London being the playground of global finance. Not sure it would be/will be attainable if said global finance jumps to New York and Frankfurt after the UK's EU exit.

The largest in the EU. Another sign the moral panic about deficits and debt was absolute nonsense.

Part of the attraction of London over New York is the timezone. We can phone people in Asia in the morning and New York in the afternoon. Also Barroso recently made this threat of all of the financial sector decamping to Europe even very pro-European Brits like the editor of the FT said he was blowing it up enormously. They'd probably move some functions to within the EU (but then the EU is already passing laws, against the treaties in my view and pending an ECJ judgement, restricting trading in the Euro which is mostly done in London to Eurozone countries) but it doesn't help the pro-Europe case to exaggerate.

[Ideologue]

God, Tamas makes me want to vote UKIP, and I don't even live there.

[Tamas]

God, Tamas makes me want to vote UKIP, and I don't even live there.

Weren't you paying attention? Sheilbh keeps claiming that I am the archetype UKIP voter, except that I am not a xenophobe.

[Tamas]

The largest in the EU. Another sign the moral panic about deficits and debt was absolute nonsense.

No. My point is that the UK is having an easy time being the exception, because the whole financial world would work on keeping its budget alive.

As for deficit in general. I know that deficit spending makes sense in a lot of cases, especially things like infrastructure improvements, which, as you pointed out, would be much harder to do via the private sector alone.
However, deficit spending on everyday spending seems like a horrible idea.

As for local councils happy to get elbow deep into properties: that would be the case entirely independent of the practical utility of it. Permissions on mega-expensive projects (which property/infrastructure is, compared to everything else), and the ability to channel construction money to friends and strawmen are Corruption 101.

It's like Friedman said: it is not exactly a big deal that governments are happy to embrace Keynesian economics, since those give them the most power and money.

[Ideologue]

The point is you complain an awful lot for a guest.

[CountDeMoney]

No shit.  Douchebag's one IT cert removed from going back to farming mud in that east bloc shithole he crawled out of.

[Sheilbh]

No. My point is that the UK is having an easy time being the exception, because the whole financial world would work on keeping its budget alive.

The UK isn't an exception. Everyone's got historically low lending rates.

As for deficit in general. I know that deficit spending makes sense in a lot of cases, especially things like infrastructure improvements, which, as you pointed out, would be much harder to do via the private sector alone.
However, deficit spending on everyday spending seems like a horrible idea.

Obviously. That's basic Keynes isn't it?

This is partly what annoys me about this government.

What they've actually done is cut the deficit roughly in half over the course of this Parliament which is, roughly, what Labour promised to do. But when the coalition came into office they promised to eliminate the deficit over the course of this Parliament (which obviously they've failed at). They also made a big sort of shock and awe of initial cuts in their emergency budget, but because doing that on everyday spending is difficult and doesn't have an immediate impact they did it by absolutely gutting the government's capital spending budget - on things like infrastructure, school construction etc. To my mind that's the bit of the budget that probably should have been most protected because it's okay to borrow for that (after all surely future generations should pay for infrastructure which they're beneficiaries of) and it boosts growth immediately.

After they did that we, unsurprisingly, had another mini recession. Plus the absurd bits of the budget they're increasing (pensions) or ring-fencing (the NHS, though around £100 billion spending there has gone on the most baffling NHS reorganisation in a very long history of baffling reorganisations). But given the recession they couldn't actually cut the other bits of the budget as quickly as we wanted so we ended up where Darling said we should but via a circuitous, painful route. I think it's about the worst possible way they could have done it

Add to that that the new jobs that are being created are mostly low paid and the cost low paid workers to the state isn't that much lower than the cost of unemployed worker and that's partly why I think we should increase the minimum wage and stop the subsidies to employers of low paid staff.

As for local councils happy to get elbow deep into properties: that would be the case entirely independent of the practical utility of it. Permissions on mega-expensive projects (which property/infrastructure is, compared to everything else), and the ability to channel construction money to friends and strawmen are Corruption 101.

It's like Friedman said: it is not exactly a big deal that governments are happy to embrace Keynesian economics, since those give them the most power and money.

What?

Weren't you paying attention? Sheilbh keeps claiming that I am the archetype UKIP voter, except that I am not a xenophobe.

Just remember that UKIP was founded by people who wept hot tears when Maggie was stabbed in the back by pro-Europeans after she'd seen the light and started saying things like, 'we have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.'

[Admiral Yi]

Obviously. That's basic Keynes isn't it?

Not really.  Keynes focused on deficit spending compensating for a shortfall in aggregate demand.  AFAIK he didn't even look at how the deficit is spent.

I think that only later did the concept of deficit as "investment" arise to rationalize endemic deficits.

[Tamas]

The point is you complain an awful lot for a guest.

1. As if I haven't pointed out enough that I am aware of being a guest, and that overall I love the place

2. All of this is universal. UK is just an example.

3. You are a communist who is hell bent on stealing other people's money to spend it on yourself, so STFU

[Tamas]

What?

You highlighted how eager local councils are to be involved with property. I pointed out that -regardless of whether this is objectively the right policy or not- governments of all levels will be keen to get involved with property as that is a great corruption and power projection tool. Probably the best.
And that reminded me of Friedman's bigger point I heard from him on one of his videos. That the popularity of Keynesian economics with country leaders should hardly be a surprise for everyone, since the rude basics of that policy is to give powers to those leaders to spend spend spend.

A minor point, never mind.


Oh, and Thatcher

[Sheilbh]

Not really.  Keynes focused on deficit spending compensating for a shortfall in aggregate demand.  AFAIK he didn't even look at how the deficit is spent.

Okay. I'm the same-ish. I misread Tamas.

The point I thought he made was that deficit spending in certain circumstances (ie. 2008-12) is okay, but not everyday deficit spending. Which I agree with and is from what I understand basic Keynes.

Though I'd add I do think infrastructure spending is a special category where it's entirely right to borrow for it rather than tax.

You highlighted how eager local councils are to be involved with property. I pointed out that -regardless of whether this is objectively the right policy or not- governments of all levels will be keen to get involved with property as that is a great corruption and power projection tool. Probably the best.

It's not corruption really, I don't think - though I'm sure there's some, we're not Ireland with the construction. Local councils have a lot of powers over planning given to them by central government and previously there weren't really any planning laws and then there was a fear we were basically destroying our countryside, subsequently we worried we were destroying our urban heritage too and there's strict regulations there. Similarly in terms of demand the first council building wasn't corrupt it was crusading left-wing Labour councils (mostly in London) clearing slums and building decent housing.

Local people who own properties get more up in arms over planning decisions than any other issue, by a mile. I don't know if it's just a British thing but owning property is an obsession here. See every Daily Mail article ever written. Even ones about something totally unrelated will include the price of that person's house in parenthesis. In large parts of the country any application for planning permission of almost any type will be met with petitions, letters to the councillors, people turning up to the planning committee. Any councillor who wants to be re-elected takes note of that sort of thing.

The idea that someone's going to build new (probably ugly) homes in the field down the road, or that your neighbour's going to build a two story extension that'll block your sunlight, lower your property price and look vulgar - I mean these are routine motives for murder on British TV

[Josquius]

Our planning laws are too strict.
But then there's Japan where they pretty much don't exist.

As to deficits... again
Its just insane how much people care about deficits and debt all of a sudden this government.

The UK isn't actually in debt.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2118152/Tangled-web-debt-Who-owes-trillions.html

[Admiral Yi]

I thought Tokyo had very strict regulations about blocking sunlight to other buildings.