Well done Harriet Harman

[nexus]

Come on Stumuzz, it's a fair question after that nasty attack- are you a landlord or aren't you?

[JavaScriptDonkey]

Remember that housing benefit is a payment from general taxation to landlords. Housing benefit was invented by the Tories under Thatcher. It pushed house prices up to the benefit of all who own their own property. Clever, to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, while pretending the opposite, and then having an opportunity to blame those unable to prosper when times get tight.

With a slightly different slant it would be easy to argue that Housing Benefit is a taxation on the rich (who actually pay most of the tax) that is re-distributed to the middle classes in the form of keeping house prices unnaturally high.

You might want to read the various Housing Acts enacted under Thatcher, particularly the ones that deal with secured tenancies and rent protection.

[nexus]

We could have done what we did after the war and build a decent amount of good quality social housing and then rent it out at reasonable rents. Thatcher's right to buy is one of the reasons we're in this bloody mess now.

[JavaScriptDonkey]

I completely agree that we now need a massive Council house building boom but I'm not so sure about it being Thatcher's fault.

A lot of the housing stock sold off was sub-standard and would still be in much the same state without the private money ploughed into it by the new owners.

A lot of the then tenants stayed in their houses and live in them still - not every one cashed out for a quick buck.

Even if the houses had stayed in Council hands there would still be a massive shortage. In fact if house prices were a lot lower you could argue that even less would have been built over the years and so we might have even fewer to go around.

[Little John]

Remember that housing benefit is a payment from general taxation to landlords. Housing benefit was invented by the Tories under Thatcher. It pushed house prices up to the benefit of all who own their own property. Clever, to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, while pretending the opposite, and then having an opportunity to blame those unable to prosper when times get tight.

With a slightly different slant it would be easy to argue that Housing Benefit is a taxation on the rich (who actually pay most of the tax).....

That's because the rich possess an obscenely disproportionate share of the wealth.

You jokers are funny, except without the laughs

[stumuzz]

Come on Stumuzz, it's a fair question after that nasty attack- are you a landlord or aren't you?

First tell me what was nasty or untrue about it.

[Little John]

I completely agree that we now need a massive Council house building boom but I'm not so sure about it being Thatcher's fault.

A lot of the housing stock sold off was sub-standard and would still be in much the same state without the private money ploughed into it by the new owners.

A lot of the then tenants stayed in their houses and live in them still - not every one cashed out for a quick buck.

Even if the houses had stayed in Council hands there would still be a massive shortage. In fact if house prices were a lot lower you could argue that even less would have been built over the years and so we might have even fewer to go around.

Utter bollocks

Before the post war social housebuilding program, the poor were forced to live in overcrowded squalid housing. For all of its faults in modernist design, that social housebuilding program allowed poor people to live in decent housing and no longer be at the mercy of an extortionate, ruthless landlord class.

And to add insult to injury, the steady privatisation of that publicly owned social housing stock has quite possibly cost the taxpayer more over the years in extortionate housing benefit to private landlords than it would have by plowing all of that wasted public money into maintaining and even increasing the social housing stock.

We're heading back to Victorian housing conditions for the poor.

[biffvernon]

It was not a policy.

Eh? Are we speaking the same language. The introduction of Housing Benefit was, if not a government policy, then what?

[biffvernon]

taxation on the rich (who actually pay most of the tax)

Who pays most of the tax? That's quite complicated. I deliberately wrote 'the Exchequer' rather than 'taxation' and certainly not 'income tax payers'.



Plus the money magicked by QE.

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_i ... ed_Kingdom and it was for 2008 but I don't suppose the current pie looks very different.)

[stumuzz]

It was not a policy.

Eh? Are we speaking the same language. The introduction of Housing Benefit was, if not a government policy, then what?

It was legislation, a reaction to increasing housing costs. Again, what should have been done to those who were earning and borrowing more than those producing the goods and shoveing up the price of housing?

A policy is something you ( the gov') wish to happen. I am asserting the HB bill was a reaction.

[AndySir]

With a slightly different slant it would be easy to argue that Housing Benefit is a taxation on the rich (who actually pay most of the tax)...

You may need to fact check that JSD. Vast majority of income tax receipts tend to fall in the lower couple of brackets, simply because there are so many more people in them. There's a big drop off when you hit £50k and over £150k per annum it's barely worth counting. Was trying to find the link and failed, but I know I've posted it here before.

ETA: I see Biff beat me to it, with better research...

[biffvernon]

It was not a policy.

Eh? Are we speaking the same language. The introduction of Housing Benefit was, if not a government policy, then what?

It was legislation, a reaction to increasing housing costs. Again, what should have been done to those who were earning and borrowing more than those producing the goods and shoveing up the price of housing?

A policy is something you ( the gov') wish to happen. I am asserting the HB bill was a reaction.

I think there must have been a policy before the legislation was enacted! And it was a sugar-pill at the time of the great council house sell-off rather than a reaction to any non-government policy induced house price rise!

[biffvernon]

With a slightly different slant it would be easy to argue that Housing Benefit is a taxation on the rich (who actually pay most of the tax)...

You may need to fact check that JSD. Vast majority of income tax receipts tend to fall in the lower couple of brackets, simply because there are so many more people in them. There's a big drop off when you hit £50k and over £150k per annum it's barely worth counting. Was trying to find the link and failed, but I know I've posted it here before.

Which is exactly the argument that the government used when dropping the 50p tax rate to 45p.

[Little John]

With a slightly different slant it would be easy to argue that Housing Benefit is a taxation on the rich (who actually pay most of the tax)...

You may need to fact check that JSD. Vast majority of income tax receipts tend to fall in the lower couple of brackets, simply because there are so many more people in them. There's a big drop off when you hit £50k and over £150k per annum it's barely worth counting. Was trying to find the link and failed, but I know I've posted it here before.

The declared and therfore taxable income of the richest 20% may only represent a small proportion of the total tax take of this country. However, it remains the case that the top 20% possess, in terms of the total wealth of this country, over 64% of that total total wealth. The f*ckers should be taxed at 90% of income. Either that or they can hand back to the country as a whole some of that disproprtionate share of wealth.

[biffvernon]

And if you still haven't watched this 6 minute film.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM