Friday, April 19, 2013
Democratic shift
Proportion of home-owning Britons falls to 30-year low
When the majority of British people rent then housing will be available at construction cost. To those that come after come the reward!
Posted by stillthinking @ 05:57 PM (1560 views)
4 thoughts on “Democratic shift”
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mark wadsworth says:
yes, i’ve said this loads of times.
Once the majority owns, or thinks it owns, then Home-Owner-ism kicks in, and the ultimate goal of Home-Owner-Ism is to concentrate land ownership and rent collection in as few hands as possible.
But when they get close to achieving their goal, the democratic thing goes the other way and the majority are voting for lower house prices and more construction, higher taxation of land rents and lower taxation of incomes. This leads to a much wider spread of homeownership.
Until about 1970, we had a relatively “Georgist” system (Domestic Rates, rent caps, Schedule A tax, lots of construction, lots of council housing, high taxes on landlords) and the number of owner-occupiers increased very quickly, but then the whole thing tipped over.
Maybe one day the scales will tip back the other way and we’ll have a Georgist system with LVT and so on, then the number of owner-occupiers will increase rapidly and then we get Home-Owner-Ism again and so on.
grumpybob says:
I suppose this is one of the great strengths of democracy: that when things swing too much in favour of a minority group the rest can say “Hang on a minute! Why should we accept this?”
Robpalt says:
The article is from the Editor of Moneyweek!
stuartking says:
I was talking to a local businessman in my local (South Hams) last night and he was trying to convince me of his latest money-making scheme – buy to let! Can’t go wrong, easiest way to make money, house prices can only ever go up, never down etc. Told me he had £100,000 to ‘invest’ – deposits for two homes, mortgage for rest of purchase price.
I pointed out if he bought £100,000 shares in Tesco, for example, a year ago at around 300p, they are now around 380p, plus he would have had dividends and no agency fees, maintenance costs, void periods or interest to pay, which could – if rates go up – make his whole enterprise financially unsound. Ah but shares can go down too, he rightly pointed out, without accepting that house prices can too.
He left the pub looking less happy than when he came in.
Probably won’t talk to me again! C’est la vie.