MongerOfDoom

They probably aren't. At least I don't see that I should be joining them at current prices. Hence I am not sure that making small legislative changes is going to make much difference, seeing as BTLetters would need to be rational to notice. Either way, there are people who benefit from cheaper rents and better properties, such as myself. It would be a lot harder to find somewhere decent if it wasn't for BTLtters kindly providing supply at somewhere around the break-even price. You could argue that maybe I would prefer to buy if my only competitors were other people my age and the price was correspondingly lower. Perhaps I would, but I am still not convinced that any of the market participants do anything sufficiently unfair that would require new legislation to fix. OTOH, there is plenty wrong with what the government have done, be it ignoring liar loans or QE.

I don't see how you can be certain about that. There is a Greek-style deficit that cannot go on indefinitely and will need to be eliminated one way or another. Could be the Greek way, could be the Argentinian way, or even the Zimbabwean way. Or maybe you believe that Osborne's plan will work, and all will be fine until the country exits the EU following the promised referendum. Or breaks up following the Scottish referendum. What makes you think we are not headed for *really* interesting times? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times ) Besides, if prices could change quickly on the way up, they can do the same on the way down. Do you think that once interest rates start increasing, it will be years before they go past 5% or whatever level is required to bankrupt people on IO liar mortgages?

Stamp duty already makes it very expensive to flip houses, as does estate agent commission. Plus if they were going to cash out when the market was favourable, they would have done that in 2007. It's not like they can predict what will happen any better than the rest of us.

Right. So the poor souls can afford to pay a mortgage. It's just that some nasty landlord stops them from buying their own place by charging too much in rent. This is the injustice affecting housing that the politicians need to address. I wonder if including the interest on the deposit that the landlord provided, as well as repair bills and service charges, might just eat up the £100 that they supposedly have left. And leave a sizeable shortfall too. Unless something has changed recently, it's not easily possible to get much over a 5% gross rental yield in the SE. Subtract voids and other costs, and I don't see that BTL can be profitable at all. It's at best a way of buying a low paid job in property management. I surely cannot be the only one on here who happily rents and thanks his landlord for providing accommodation for less than it would cost to buy and maintain? And for saving me the cost of stamp duty the next time my job disappears? Still, I am glad to know whose fault it all is. It would be a shame if the young generation were priced out by QE that simultaneously reduces interest rates on existing mortgages, and makes their real payrises negative. Or by their taxes getting used to bail out banks that lent money to others who wanted housing, except they could not quite afford it and had to be encouraged to lie so as to make it appear they could. Or by a system of benefits that will provide better accommodation to a claimant than someone on the NMW could afford. But now I read the insightful article I know those are not the reasons. So thanks for that.

If two extra bedrooms aren't worth £80 pcm to them, maybe they don't need them so much? And the house can be given to some other family that currently costs the taxpayer >£1000pcm in LHA? It seems to me that the rules on how many bedrooms a family needs are perfectly reasonable, especially considering that they reflect how supposedly poor people who need the help of others can live.

I think there is basically no way whatsoever that he does not understand the distinction. It is especially impossible that people at Oxford don't or cannot convey that idea to the students. If you think that you are a lot smarter than them, maybe you can try some of the Econometrics on the PPE syllabus, and see how you get on? If politically expedient, DC is smart enough to come up with a justification. Such as "We repay gilts as they fall due. With borrowed money." or "We buy gilts with printed money. Soon we will have all of them." or "The effect of the evisceration of the welfare state that we have currently under way will be to start repaying the national debt in x years". Or simply, "FFS, why is anyone surprised I am lying. Someone gave me this pile of poo to read, and I could not give a toss since no-one was going to pay attention to that rubbish. Plus anyone sane will notice we are fecked because of what Labour *did*. I simply provided an inaccurate *description* of the mess they had made. Besides, was I just meant to say we were bankrupt and there was doom coming well before that promised referendum? I really wish the electorate weren't so effink thick that Labour could get away with a daft stunt like that."

This might explain that: I really don't see what is so scary about any of this. The "bedroom tax" just levels the field between benefit recipients in social accommodation, and those who rent privately and are in receipt of the newly restricted LHA rates. There already was a large number of people on benefits who could improve their situation by having yet more children, and I don't see that the decision would be so finely balanced for a substantial proportion of them that £16 pw would make much of a difference. Besides, the deal used to be "have a lot of children, get to live in a huge house for as long as you like". Now it is "if you have a lot of children you will get to live in a large place while they grow up, and it will be beyond your means to stay as soon as they grow up". I wonder which would motivate me more to have lots of children?

That would be from roughly zero though, so even a 100% growth could be easily sustained for a few years without the majority population noticing? Some years ago I went to a talk by someone helping kids in London. Turns out some of them also rely on school meals to live, or so he said. It was substantially all caused by parental neglect rather than poverty. It might have been someone who worked for http://www.levaillantowen.com/csr.html (nice photos at the link). All I wanted to say was that the original article could be unnecessarily alarmist. But I don't know either way.

He specifically wants to discourage buy-to-leave speculators. Now how do you tell the difference between a buy-to-leave and someone who has lost a job and does not fancy paying the stamp duty again? And is it going to be easier to enforce that i) people live in their house, or ii) that they don't let it out? So the suggested measure will have a good chance of reducing housing supply and increasing the size of the surveillance state. It's not like the opportunity cost of an empty house is small. Oh, and this is somehow meant to help solve the housing problems. In circumstances when there already supposedly are many plots with a less restrictive planning permission. Let's face it. The whole article is a list of things that might potentially be useful if you need somewhere new to live right now. They are not so good when it comes to fairness or long term effects.

Let me disagree. Making planning permission conditional on you always compulsorily living in your house is clearly insane. It is also confused to suggest that high building standards are harmful. They just reduce the cost of the land, if they do any damage at all. If it is such a big deal that they motivate the developers to build nicer houses, there are much easier fixes than encouraging draughty rabbit hutches. The suggestion that land be expropriated in exchange for a pittance is radical, but in principle it does exactly the same thing as S106 that he dismisses. Except maybe that it's compulsory. It's a bit over the top for my liking to go from the state making development illegal to making it compulsory, all in one easy step.

It doesn't. But given the choice between receiving interest and not receiving interest, most will choose the former. Hence the need for FRB as that provides a decent balance between security and profitability for the depositor. You can already have a "bank" that uses FIAT currency but not FRB. But it's not possible to make money that way as hardly anyone wants that sort of a service (i.e. a safe deposit box with cash inside, except accessible electronically). Anyway, all I wanted to say was that the politician who supposedly "got it" was seriously confused.

I can still choose how to earn the money to pay my taxes. My point was that if bartering was so good, people would be doing it already (maybe bartering for some cash to pay taxes in the process). The only particular thing I have to accept in Sterling are benefits, and that's only if I were to somehow qualify. What would be the point of a bank without FRB? The only way they can pay interest is if they do something with the money after you give it to them. They could do that without FRB, except then you could not easily withdraw the money, and you would have no confidence that you will get it back.

Since when do I have to accept money for anything, let alone any particular state's money? That was kind of what I meant. Once you have money, you also naturally need banks and FRB. He does not seem to grasp this point, worryingly subtle as it may be. There is no need to abolish currency, just use one that isn't getting debased at an alarming pace.

Let me try. He wants to abolish the currency and go back to bartering. He thinks it should all be left to the market, and is entirely unconcerned by the fact that we are already allowed to barter and yet no-one bothers. He does not seem to understand that FRB is a natural consequence of the ability to enter into contracts, and not some evil scheme. Or indeed that you cannot have savings accounts without it. He is probably right that the current system is unsustainable, but given how insane the rest of what he says is, it's probably just by chance.

Thank god all pension schemes are equally good, and especially that the mandated one is not just another tax aimed mostly at the working poor. You can just imagine the conversation: employee: four percent of my salary seems to have disappeared? employer: we enrolled you into a pension, and will also contribute the next couple of payrises you were going to get employee: I'll qualify for the MIG when I retire, can I please have the money as before employer: sign here employee: and the payrises? employer: no, of course not, we are not allowed to give you those even if we wanted to employee: so I am paying the whole thing, really. It's a choice between not getting a half of the money now, and the government helping themselves later? employer: yep, your choice employee: didn't the company previously have a scheme that was lots more generous? employer: yes, but only people who would benefit from having a pension used it, so it could be afforded. Now that we have to contribute for everyone, it cannot be afforded any more. It's a lucky coincidence the executives noticed now that they themselves cannot benefit. employee: so you have lots of people coming to you, enthusiastically noticing they are better off? employer: you would be the first but maybe they'll turn up eventually, seeing as they voted for all this. It's not that I am against making people save for their retirement, but it would be sort of nice if they then were better off as a result. It would also help if there was not a mandated saving product that the government can tax at will.

Nothing whatsoever, I am glad you enjoy your enlarged knob. On occasions it's possible to think that someone acquired an expensive car because he preferred the way it drives or the comfort it provides. But if he then swaps the number plate, everyone can be certain it's just that he feels a little inadequate. Or very.

You really have missed the point of driving a sensible-brand car, I am afraid. If you feel the need to get body-coloured bumpers and then tell everyone about it, you probably are the sort of a person who would "aspire" to owning a premium German knob extension, but just cannot afford one?

I guess you can still legitimately wonder if it's such a good use of money. I think the situation is that a rather non-trivial proportion of school kids are only border-line literate, so addressing that would be a reasonable first priority for any spare resources. Unlike reading and basic numeracy, there is a limited use to forcing people to sing who do not have the talent or inclination. I certainly hated every minute of having my time wasted that way, and still remember just how much some decades later. I am all for providing resources for children who actively want to study music, participate in sport, learn Latin, whatever. Doing it on the sort of a scale that requires a coordinator might be a little over the top though, particularly if there isn't a need for someone to coordinate the kids learning to read and count. But let's bear in mind we don't really know with any certainty what the job involves.

So when exactly do you expect rents in London to fall sufficiently so that the low-skilled who live there can "afford" to work? If they move, there won't necessarily be an increase in rents wherever they move to. For example, if they just swap places with the current commuters there is no need for the rents to rise at all.

If that's so easy, why do we need HB at all? I wonder if you noticed that the country cannot afford the welfare budget, or indeed the pension promises, current levels of healthcare, education, and an awful lot of other things that the people somehow got used to taking for granted. If something has to be cut then money spent on housing welfare recipients in central London must surely be one of the very easiest choices to make? I would be grateful if we could avoid repeating the usual confused argument about social housing not costing anything to provide. Errm? Are you suggesting everyone needs HB in order to live in Central London? And that it should stay that way? You rumbled them. It's just an inbred feeling of class superiority, and nothing whatsoever to do with presence of the underclass and high levels or crime correlating rather well? There is some irony in you accusing others of falling for rubbish and crap. I suspect it will be rather lost on you.

How would that work then? The government cut their spending by 9% of GDP, so they need to borrow 9% of GDP less. So there is 9% of GDP that would previously be lent to the government that now needs to be invested or spent some other way? Obviously, the economy will need to rebalance to provide the sort of goods that people who previously used to park their dollars in treasuries might want, rather than the sort popular with pen-pushers, benefit recipients, medicare patients, the armed forces, and 5-a-day coordinators (they surely have them over the pond too, for they are essential in any modern society?) Now I have absolutely no idea how painful the rebalancing would be. But I am not sure that it is possible to say with certainty that it would cause a crisis. It is clear that it would be unpopular as far the re-election chances of the administration go, so perhaps it makes sense to file any claims of impending doom caused by not borrowing more money that can never be repaid in the same place as the abolished boom-and-bust or the saved world?

So it's true then .... Seriously though, the cap - especially at that level - would appear to be the least controversial part of the benefit reforms. If they U-turn on what will likely be the most popular part, they'll probably want to scrap just about everything else too. It's not like that could be afforded though. I suspect we may find that on occasions people post made-up rubbish on the net for reasons best known to themselves.

Or vote for a party that will introduce legislation that stops companies imposing arbitrary fines on their customers, or enforcing any other unfair contract terms. Oh, the people already have? Ryanair are clearly sailing very close to the wind when it comes to imposing charges that bear no relation to the cost of providing the service they are supposedly for. I don't see that getting charged a large amount for an extra kg of baggage is anything other than a fine. Ditto as far a forgotten boarding pass goes. How about you rephrase your argument: if you don't want to be charged UKP25 for a letter telling you that you are overdrawn, don't go overdrawn? How about UKP500? Is there any limit you'd consider unacceptable? Do you even think a bank should tell you beforehand what the charge might be? It's not like that would follow from your argument, or indeed your helpful advice to live in reality. An important advantage of a civilised society is that you don't need to consult a lawyer to advise you about the possible ways you can get screwed before agreeing to a consumer contract, and can instead reasonably expect that whatever deal you get will be fair in the way sane people understand that word. You might think that Ryanair treat their customers fairly, but I somehow doubt that we would be discussing it if it were quite so clear-cut.

Road tax is now used to implement a purchase tax on luxury cars, so it cannot be just added to the cost of fuel unless you also want to redistribute the tax burden. What I want them to abolish is the need to have insurance and MOT before I can pay the tax. I really don't see how it helps to make it an offense to drive from a passed MOT test taken after the previous MOT expired to a post office with the intention of buying the tax disc there. That way it would also be possible to pay the tax arbitrarily long in advance.

It's not like they steal the money. They provide a service that is worth more than the customers pay for it. The difference between the two stays in the UK. I'd happily pay £1000 p.a. for access to a search engine, but can instead use one for free, and then on a computer with privoxy on. The reason I would pay that amount is that I can get lots more work done and need fewer reference books. So that would be why google existing is good for the UK even without them paying employer's taxes over here. Any money they hoard in Bermuda is not piled in the corner of a dusty room. It will still be invested. In any case, there is a good chance it's not held in Sterling, so the UK revenue had been sold to someone who wanted to spend it in the UK. I think companies should pay tax in the UK on any profits generated in the UK. But the only way to achieve that is to pass a law that says they should. Trying to make them by means of a publicity campaign must be about as helpful as having a two minutes hate every morning in front of the telescreen, and about as graceful as an annoying chugger who harasses people on their way to work early in the morning.