bartelbe

Sounds like something that idiot Sunak would do. Throw billions into a collapsing house market and then act baffled as to why the government is now broke.

You still haven't answer the question why? If Starmer leads to zero changes in policy, except perhaps some woke non-sense, what is the point of voting for him?

You still haven't answered the question. Starmer is in the pocket of the developers and is launching a Tory style attack on public services. He increasingly looks like just another Tory. So why should I vote for one Tory over another?

Well that is nice but your accounting trick still doesn't raise the cold hard cash you actually need to fund such services. The question, which is being repeatedly dodged here, is how do you raise the money to improve loss making public transport? How do you persuade taxpayers to make that a priority over pensions, healthcare, education, law and order and defence? When the majority of taxpayers don't use public transport.

Your reply is simple but just not in the way you think. Take the Nordic countries, which have much better public services than we do. Did they manage to fund those services the way you suggest? Nope, they had to increase levels of general taxation on people of average means. You sum up the problem with modern politics, the unwillingness to confront hard truths. Sure you can get more tax out of the rich but it is harder to do than you think and it wouldn't raise enough money to pay for the things you want.

Why is it important? Starmer is advocating a Tory agenda and is in the pocket the Tory bribers (donors). If you get the same policies with Starmer, what is the point?

He has gone full red tory, now he is has got Blair on board. Pointless voting for him, whoever you vote for you get a Tory.

Safe and legal is the standard get out of the woke left, it is also non-sense. Are they seriously saying if we had a quota for say 20000 refugees a year, the ones who we reject will say that is a fair cop and stay in France? The reality is, they won't, they will hop on the nearest dingy and come over here. So unless the safe and legal crowd can outline their deterrent for stopping illegals immigrants, what they are effectively advocating is open borders.

Ah the good old developers charter. Vast numbers of house have been built in my area, thanks to local development plans and house prices have gone up. Developers want to build expensive executive detaches and town houses, on greenfield land. Not affordable housing for young people and key workers. Starmer is retuning to the bent old days of Nu Labour and the red tories. Which means he is in the developers pockets and his pledges are worthless.

I thought that but I just looked up the numbers and there isn't much difference, per capita between the UK and Germany. Of course in reality their wealth is real and ours is mainly made up of debt.

They pay more tax than we do, according to OECD 39% of their GDP compared to 33% here. You're also assuming they can afford it, which I doubt in the long run. Just like ourselves, Germany is facing a demographic crisis. Pensions will swallow up everything.

Depends on immigration levels, the UK fertility rates is below the replacement level.

We pay for this how? The brutal reality is, public transport is loss making and costs a fortune to run. That is even in urban areas with the sort of population densities that make public transport viable. In rural areas the economics are hopeless. That cost would be brutal even to make the useless system we have now affordable. To actually build a truly useful system, with metros in every major urban centre, a modern rail network and buses with frequent services and good connections would cost even more. So how are we meant to afford that, when we already have record tax levels, massive levels of government debt and a huge bill for pensions and the NHS to cover?

The government has two problems when it comes to bailing out the housing market. The first is financial, there simply isn't the money to pumps 10's of billions into housing. The second is political, the rental vote is becoming more and more important. A multi-billion bailout for the housing market would be toxic with voters who rent.

The Bank of England has been completely captured by the asset holding classes. In theory their remit is the keep inflation in check, in reality they seem far more concerned about protecting the interests of home owners and other asset holders. To effectively fight inflation interest rates need to be much higher. Instead we have the worst of all worlds, interest rates high enough to cause a bit of pain but nowhere near high enough to effectively fight inflation.

Still going to be fewer people chasing those houses, lowering prices.

I guarantee that if the banks lent them more than they can afford, they would be onto the lawyers demanding compensation and a government bailout in a couple of years time.

Wait till the boomers fall off their perch, there will be plenty of homes then.

A great idea if you want to double the cost of healthcare and leave millions without treatment, like America. A far better idea would be a European social insurance system, with funding and provision split.

No chance this is going to happen, the I PAID MY STAMP army would destroy the Tories at the ballot box if they dared to try this.

Buyers and sellers have no say in the matter. Most buyers believe in an endless house price bubble just as much as sellers and FTB are over stretching due to FOMO. What matters is who banks are willing to lend to. In theory banks should be staffed by professionals who take a hard headed look at the market. In reality banks are run by morons, who are living in just as big a fantasy world as their customers. At the moment mortgages are under priced in the deluded belief rates are quickly heading back to 0%. When that fantasy is exposed, mortgages cost go up and the market crashes.

What sellers want is irrelevant, you can ask 10 million pounds for a terrace in Sunderland, that doesn't mean you are going to get it. The problem is not just sellers are deluded, it is buyers are willing to indulge this delusion, including first time buyers. Who are taking out mortgages they can't afford, based on FOMO and the assumption house price inflation will wipe the debt out. While banks justify lending to such people based on wishful thinking about interest rates going back to very low levels There is a huge amount invested in keeping the housing bubble going and not just in financial terms. That is why the crash isn't happening but once it begins, it will have a momentum that will cause prices to collapse faster than most expect.

The US will never default because it can simply print dollars to pay off any debt. Of course the problem with that is the potential to destroy the value of the dollar and create runaway inflation but that technically wouldn't be a default.

The problem is you assumed that markets work rationally, when they don't. The public are irrational, many of them aren't very bright, so it is hardly a surprise predicting market behaviour is so difficult. After all, it is basically a collection of not very bright ill informed people buying and selling stuff. Those who got rich got lucky, it could have just have easily blown up their faces.

It is amazing how little the average member of the British public understands about economics or even the basics of how finances work. Take someone I work with, who is a home owner and amateur landlord. He was outraged at interest rates going up and had no idea what inflation was. I tried to explain the basics to him but alas I couldn't find my glove puppets. What I found astonishing is someone had taken out two mortgages, while being completely unaware of the Bank of England, base rates and the potential for his mortgage interest rates to go up. Economically this man was basically a child and yet he had been allowed to borrow a vast amount of money that he is now struggling to pay back.