Eagle wrote:A Socialist Moi????? Though have to admit voting for Harold in 70.
Although now more leaning to The Conservative and Unionist Party I can see that private landlords are upsetting the smooth operation of the housing market.
Let's get this straight. Do you want there to be private landlords, or do you just not want private landlords who upset the smooth operation of the housing market? If the former, then you're saying people should either be owner occupiers, or live in social housing. I think that's barmy. If you're saying the latter, then what is it that private landlords do that interferes with the smooth operation of the housing market? I'd agree that buying properties and deliberately keeping them empty in the expectation of prices going up - speculation - will interfere as you suggest, but we know there really is not that much of this happening in London. As
Weeble pointed out, using figures from a link Lee himself posted, the scale of housing need dwarfs any amount of property being deliberately kept empty here. Prices now are stagnant, but rents are high; a private sector landlord would be crazy to keep property deliberately empty.
Eagle wrote:You keep saying the only solution is build build build. How is that different from Eire or Espana??
You refer to housing bubbles, which have now burst. Once upon a time there was a bubble in tulip bulbs - should we still ban Shannons for selling them? Markets
can misfunction, and mass delusions - such as that property can only ever go up in price - are often the reason why. Not at all the same as level headed investors, maybe older people who want a better return on their savings than they can get from the bank, who see that they can do this by buying somewhere where a younger person, without their own savings yet, can live in the meantime. No reason to condemn the private rented sector out of hand.
Eagle wrote:We can only build when people can afford to buy.
We've been through this. There is plenty of money out there which would be happy to invest in new build for rent, albeit at the right price. That's why making market prices for housing more affordable will help get the new build we want.
Eagle wrote:I agree in Germany more do rent and rent lower but much less densely populated than us. Especially England.
Sorry - just been told my dinner's ready - back later ... so to continue ...
Pretty well everywhere, and in every phase of history since the collapse of the Roman Empire, people have tended to move from less to more densely populated areas. There are numerous reasons why, and countless libraries written to describe and explain, but in few instances have people actually been forced into cities. The first key reason is that most people find it more interesting and stimulating to live somewhere with other people around. Not all, of course, but most. The second reason is that it is more economical - you don't have to travel such long distances to your place of work, or where you buy and sell good / services. If you live close together you also save heating costs, and your municipality - sometimes a private sector utility - can provide security, fuel, sanitation and other services more economically, thanks to returns to scale. Of course, it's only possible if farming techniques advance enough to free people from manual toil on the fields - but they have advanced, and they still are advancing.
Against this there have always been reactionaries, who just don't like social and technological change, whatever it is, and will insist that the old ways are best. Witness number one here is Rousseau, who argued that "man is born free, but is everywhere in chains". It's a line that sold a lot of books, and is often felt to have led to some of the worst excesses of the French Revolution; in my life time anti-progressive, back to the land regimes have led to appalling losses of human life, in Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia.
This sort of anti-urban reaction is expressed rather more benignly when, in acts of conspicuous consumption, people who have made enough money living in cities, demonstrate to others how successful they have been by buying a little place in the country - and it has to be admitted, it carries a lot of social cachet.
Trying to tell ordinary people that they are wrong to want to live in cities is unrealistic and patronising. Cities are where the jobs are in a modern economy.
As was the case in 1844, when Engels wrote about the Condition of the Working Classes. By modern standards Manchester was a hell hole, and by the standards of Engels' bourgeois upbringing. But not by the standards of the grinding poverty of contemporary rural life, which was far different from the version peddled by romantic reactionaries terrified of the newly rising power of middle-class manufacturers and the organised working classes.
Eagle wrote:Another article in paper today said pensions will be dead in 20 years. Young not interested in putting money away for years ( unless they are in a Govt sponsored gold plated index linked pension ) . Who will support them in retirement in 20 or 40 years. I expect they believe the state , but they could be in for a nasty shock.
They could indeed, as could you be if you think the state is going to ban private sector landlords. So remember that youthful dalliance with Socialism, and join Lewisham People Before Profit now!
