Saturday 25 April 2015

Glorious, just Glorious

Tony Hazell here.

Criticise - sort of - buy to let subsidies.

Then praise greenie subsidies. Which admittedly he then decries.

What can I say that has not already been said...?

I suppose that it is at least a start in the mainstream.  FT Adviser is part of the FT group.

9 comments:

Bayard said...

Two points:

How much of the demand to "get on the housing ladder" is because of a desire to benefit from increasing land values and how much is because of a desire to be able to do what you like with your own home? i.e. how much of the demand would simply melt away if land prices started to fall for an appreciable period? I'd guess that it was more than 50%.

"But it seems bizarre that the politicians who constantly talk about the struggles of first-time buyers consistently fail to see evidence that is right in front of their noses."

There's none so blind as them that don't want to see. The Tory party has always been the landowners' party, only those landowners are now urban rentiers (i.e. BtLers) not rural gentry.

Lola said...

B yeah. The political choice in the UK has been narrowed down to a choice between two forms of rent seeking/ subsidy.
Tories are genyewine rent seekers, and Labour are subsidy payers from 'rent' collected from wealth creators (i.e. production). Neither of them will tackle the land monopoly head on. The Tories because its their constituency and Labour because to do would liberate the client state - which means they'd have no reason to be.

Random said...

http://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2015/apr/25/inheritance-tax-super-rich-tory-myth
Oh noes "ordinary people caught by rising house prices."

Random said...

The homeownerists on here:
http://moslereconomics.com/2011/11/17/my-big-fat-greek-mmt-exit-strategy/
"This is one item that has always seemed unjust to me. A person’s home is their last piece of security in this hard world. And yet, if they lose their income and cannot pay taxes on their home they are thrown out. In reality, as well, no one really owns their home, because it can be taken from them if they don’t pay taxes.
I fully endorse people having to pay taxes on their their second home, or on plush villas, and the like, in cases where it is obvious the person has no security problem"
BTW, Lola (and MW) what would you do if Greece finance minister?

Random said...

More:
"A land tax would cripple the most productive sector of the greek economy-apart from tourism-the small farmer.Greek small farmers already have the lowest standard of living and the lowest pensions in the country (300 euros a month) and they are the only thing not wrong with the economy now-tax them on land holdings and you will destroy the mostly successful agriculture industry."

Mark Wadsworth said...

It's tricky isn't it? If the state is throwing money at you, is it not normal to accept it?

R, you know perfectly well what I'd do. Default on the debts, introduce LVT and remove/reduce taxes on income.

As to the 'last piece of security' nonsense, that is why there would be a personal allowance - if you really don't want to ever pay tax on your home, then buy a home in a cheaper area which will never be liable to the tax.

Random said...

http://twitter.com/Conservatives/status/591634372782137344/photo/1
Exempt teh family home.

Random said...

Bloody Tories.
Would you like your children to inherit unearned land price gains? But on the other hand - earned income NO WAY!

Bayard said...

Random@1841: That's the land = farmland fallacy.