Tired of Waiting

410m2 for 6 people (the couple has 4 daughters) is not too much. It's just 68m2/person. But having to pay £3,450/week is completely, bonkerly insane! He - and his wife - must have realised just how stupidly unaffordable housing have become in London. And I hope he realises that most of the SE is not too far behind, relatively to local earnings.

Priceless.

I think the benefit that went up the most in that period was housing benefit. Though I don't have data at hand (and I had some wine, which is fogging things a little, sorry.) Anyway, back to my old "mantras", I think one of our main root problems is housing shortage, distorting everything, from benefits to our international competitiveness (see my sig. and all that).

If I may suggest a middle ground here, the bubble economy was financing an inflated welfare state, as the first popped, the second has to be trimmed. .

Brilliant.

It's a limited company. http://corporate.cch-online.org.uk/ "Not for profit", you understand, though I wonder if the directors' salaries are public knowledge. Even less clear: http://www.cobalthousing.org.uk/about-us/

+1 Me too, I agree with his general analysis, but he didn't explain at all how or why V would increase, much less how or why V would increase suddenly: "This inflation-limiting factor is likely to end very abruptly."

+ 1 Last week Newsnight showed a clip where a woman told how she felt the day she got a house large enough to accommodate her family: "It was like Christmases all in one". But now that a grown up daughter has moved out she doesn't want to downsize. I'm not sure if she really can't see that the house will be as useful for the new family as it was for hers! 17 min 30 sec in: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03674zp/Newsnight_27_06_2013/ Rationing is painful, of course, but the only way to avoid it is to allow more house building. .

Of course we don't have yet fully free trade, world-wide, but at each round of negotiations at the WTO's GATT we improve things a bit ( link ), not to mention loads of bilateral and regional agreements, like the EU, NAFTA, Mercosul, some is Asia, etc. ANd now there are talks about a NAFTA - EU trade agreement. Though these "rich countries only" trade areas carry a serious danger: the exclusion of poorer countries. That's why the GATTs are much more important for poor countries. Britain has lots of comparative advantages, and just 1 major problem: property costs. If our productive sectors were not saddled so heavily with these fecking b@stards rentier parasites Britain would do very well indeed (see my sig and all that).

I'm not sure if you are consciously creating a strawman there, or if you are making an honest mistake. I have never said or thought that poor people in poor country need some "moral evolution in order to deserve" better pay. Of course they should be better paid. The question is how to get there. And history shows, and is still showing, again and again, that free trade is the best way for poor countries to develop, and that the best way to reduce domestic inequalities is via liberal democracies. What other system have done a better job? Socialism? Righ-wing dictatorships? "Benign dictatorships"? What other system is better?

Necessity_and_sufficiency They were against it: August 1843 http://www.economist.com/node/1873493 You are absolutely correct there. Poor people in poor countries have very few options. But that is precisely why development is so important. And the best way to develop a country is with free trade. The world is developing fast. See this video: If you honestly wants to help the poor in poor countries you should campaign against (our) protectionism. That is what harms them most.

There is a little difference there, with gen Y, but they are still young. My concern is that they will grow up and do like the "x", who appeared to have joined the trend in the past 2 years. BTW, why this sudden "x" change?? Not sure if this data makes sense, and is really reliable.

That's exactly it. I wrote something similar above, in posts 20 and 21. The productive sectors are saddled by the dead-weight of the rentiers classes. Of course it reduces our international competitiveness, as I say in my forum signature, below.

Update: Newsnight had a report on it, this past Thursday: 16min 50sec in: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03674zp/Newsnight_27_06_2013/

Well remembered. I forgot Labour's high density imperatives when I was replying above, probably because I was thinking about the past 30 or 50 years.

Chart with the population growth in Britain, German and France in the past 50 years: LINK: http://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_totl&hl=en&dl=en&idim=country:DEU:FRA:GBR#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_pop_totl&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:DEU:FRA:GBR&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false

Sure, the South has a much more critical housing shortage. And since those 33m2/person is the national average, in the South it must be even worse than that. But I don't have regional data about it. BTW, talking about data, I did post a "disclaimer" before about that chart (housing space/person), as I don't know if that source is reliable, nor what was their data source. I agree that our scarcity is self-inflicted, mainly via planning, but I'm not sure it happened in a purposeful way, coordinated by some "elite". I think it's a combination of local NIMBYism + Local Authorities not wanting to spend money in infrastructure. They prefer to spend on their own salaries and pensions. The question is why Parliament and the Central Government don't push for liberalisation? The answer: opposition from the older voters = property owners, supported by their media.

You had written that the German population had fallen by 2 million people in the past decade. But the chart in the link you posted showed that not only the increase had been in fact only a fraction of that, but also that the German population had increased a lot in the previous decades. Since German house prices have been stable for 3 decades, and considering that they have now 55m2/person, whilst we have only 33, this surely indicates that they have built MUCH MUCH more than we have in these past 3 decades (or before that, less likely though). From 1960, the populations of both Britain and German increased by 10 million each, whilst France's increased by 20 million. Again, France has bigger and cheaper houses than us. See the chart below: LINK: http://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_totl&hl=en&dl=en&idim=country:DEU:FRA:GBR#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_pop_totl&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:DEU:FRA:GBR&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false .

I wasn't implying anything. I just thanked you for the info, and linked Wikepedia agreeing with you.

Thanks. Those numbers were misleading me (for a moment I was happy...) But if wikipedia is right, " In the 2010 budget, the Chancellor ended stamp duty on homes under £250,000 for first-time buyers for a two-year period only (...)" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_duty_in_the_United_Kingdom

I admit, you are very good, at trolling. Let's keep it simple, step by step: Can you see the difference between these three arguments? 1) Planning is the only problem. 2) Planning is the main problem. 3) Planning is a major problem. Just a yes or no will suffice for now, please. I'll then follow up with the rest of my point. If you are really not a troll, you will oblige and answer with a simple yes or no. Many thanks, ToW

Nobody has ever said that it's only planning. Please drop this silly straw-man. Many do argue though - me included - that: without our planning block this bubble would not have gone so high up nor lasted this long, because a construction boom would have curbed it!

Even if the new houses are smaller than the national average, they would still increase the total housing space, therefore increasing the average space/person. + 1

Excellent idea Dorkins.