UK House Prices Forecast 2014 to 2018 - Conclusion

[UndercoverElephant]

You're right, vt, but 95% or 15%? From the European perspective we find that somewhere between the two figures you suggest seems to work pretty well. Much of northern Europe seems to have managed fairly well with marginal tax rates around 50% and when we look at the US level of public services and the spread of wealth distribution there, we incline towards a higher, rather than a lower figure.

It is hard to fifty percent out of a rich man IN AMERICA. IN AMERICA he will devote five percent to accountants, tax lawyers, and political contributions to lower his bill...

Fixed it for you. The US is not the whole world. Things work a little differently outside the US.

[AndySir]

You're right, vt, but 95% or 15%? From the European perspective we find that somewhere between the two figures you suggest seems to work pretty well. Much of northern Europe seems to have managed fairly well with marginal tax rates around 50% and when we look at the US level of public services and the spread of wealth distribution there, we incline towards a higher, rather than a lower figure.

It is hard to fifty percent out of a rich man. He will devote five percent to accountants, tax lawyers, and political contributions to lower his bill and he can let winning investments ride as the capital gains only come due when you sell and settle up.
Other then your National health service what great service are you getting for your tax money?

Okay, apart from policing, free education (up to 17/18, subsidised afterwards), roads and infrastructure, research, healthcare, pensions, public parks, heritage sites and museum, libraries and a whole host of business start up grants and regeneration investment what have the Romans... uh, I mean government, done for us?

[biffvernon]

Amongst western nations the USA is certainly the odd one out, with most of Europe, particularly the better off parts, having a higher tax rate than the UK.

[clv101]

One of the largest problems in housing is the planing system.
Land with planning permission costs at least £50k per 1/20 acre plot (circa £million /acre. Land without planning costs literally zero (I've seen free land) to circa £10k/acre for high quality agricultural land. It can get a bit silly with land adjacent to houses, folk wanting larger gardens, pony paddocks etc, but basically the planning system is responsible for two orders of magnitude difference in land value.

The good news is that this is a totally artificial situation, and one we can all do something about.

For example, the Ecological Land Cooperative recently bought agricultural land, and managed to gain planning permission on it for three small holdings. I give evidence at the planning enquiry.

In Wales there is new planning legislation called One Planet Development which specifically enables residential development on non development plan land. The Welsh system is very interesting as basic needs (energy, water, proportion of food, waste assimilation...) must be met from the land and buildings must be made from local, natural materials as far as piratical... low impact.

It is totally possible to build a decent house for £20-30k. It's totally possible to buy land for less than that.

If folk want to do something useful, support One Planet Development in Wales and make it a reality in the UK too.

[jonny2mad]

Without immigration we would have had a declining population for decades. If a price of a thing has something to do with supply and demand more people wanting houses means higher prices, less people wanting houses means lower prices .

[clv101]

If a price of a thing has something to do with supply and demand more people wanting houses means higher prices, less people wanting houses means lower prices .

Remember there are more houses/capita now. We're just choosing to live in smaller (more expensive) family units.

[UndercoverElephant]

Without immigration we would have had a declining population for decades.

True.

If a price of a thing has something to do with supply and demand more people wanting houses means higher prices, less people wanting houses means lower prices .

Not true in the case of the housing market, or at least not the most important factor. In this case it is actually more to do with the supply of something that can be created out of nothing: fiat money, in the form of credit. Provided people think that property prices are going to go up, and they have access to whatever amount of money they need to borrow to buy property, then they will buy it even if they have little chance of ever paying off the debt, because they can always sell it and make a profit for doing nothing. It has nothing to do with supply and demand, because people can buy property to let to other people. If being a private landlord was made illegal then the market would be much more driven by pure supply and demand.

It is certainly true that the number of houses in total relative to the total number of people wanting to rent or buy does indeed have an effect on the price of houses, but this only really makes a difference when there is a clear surplus of houses. This has never been the case in the UK, but is currently the case in the US, and this is the reason why the property market in most of the UK is not behaving like the property market in the US, even though the banks are doing the same things. In the US they have large urban areas where the market has collapsed completely, because of this excess in properties overall. There are places in the US where you simply cannot sell a house, because nobody wants to buy one. There are one or two places in the north of the UK that are going that way, but that is because they are locations where it is almost impossible to get a job.

[vtsnowedin]

Okay, apart from policing, free education (up to 17/18, subsidised afterwards), roads and infrastructure, research, healthcare, pensions, public parks, heritage sites and museum, libraries and a whole host of business start up grants and regeneration investment what have the Romans... uh, I mean government, done for us?

All of that including health care for the poor and those over sixtyfive are provided in the US with our deplorably low tax rates as you see them. The question is what are you getting from HMG for that extra chunk your shelling out.

[3rdRock]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -editorial

The housing recovery: built on sand

With no regard for who needs the help, Help to Buy could not have been better designed to make the root problem worse.

An honest assessment of Osborne's cunning plan. Even Baldrick wasn't that stupid.

[vtsnowedin]

[quote="UndercoverElephantNot true in the case of the housing market, or at least not the most important factor. In this case it is actually more to do with the supply of something that can be created out of nothing: fiat money, in the form of credit. Provided people think that property prices are going to go up, and they have access to whatever amount of money they need to borrow to buy property, then they will buy it even if they have little chance of ever paying off the debt, because they can always sell it and make a profit for doing nothing. It has nothing to do with supply and demand, because people can buy property to let to other people. If being a private landlord was made illegal then the market would be much more driven by pure supply and demand.

.[/quote]
The supply of money is not the limiting factor it is the monthly payment plus taxes and insurance that can be supported by the buyers’ income. And it is not just the raw number of houses that determines demand. We all need to rent or buy something. What varies is how much house and what neighborhood it is in. again limited to what your income can make the payments on.
If you ban private landlords you will soon have a very inadequate supply. The government is just not competent to replace the private sector.

[vtsnowedin]

You're right, vt, but 95% or 15%? From the European perspective we find that somewhere between the two figures you suggest seems to work pretty well. Much of northern Europe seems to have managed fairly well with marginal tax rates around 50% and when we look at the US level of public services and the spread of wealth distribution there, we incline towards a higher, rather than a lower figure.

It is hard to fifty percent out of a rich man IN AMERICA. IN AMERICA he will devote five percent to accountants, tax lawyers, and political contributions to lower his bill...

Fixed it for you. The US is not the whole world. Things work a little differently outside the US.

Are you saying that calculated self interest and greed are exclusively American traits?
It is not the level of taxation. It is what you get in return for your tax dollar.

[AndySir]

Okay, apart from policing, free education (up to 17/18, subsidised afterwards), roads and infrastructure, research, healthcare, pensions, public parks, heritage sites and museum, libraries and a whole host of business start up grants and regeneration investment what have the Romans... uh, I mean government, done for us?

All of that including health care for the poor and those over sixtyfive are provided in the US with our deplorably low tax rates as you see them. The question is what are you getting from HMG for that extra chunk your shelling out.

Well that NHS makes up about a fifth of our budget, so that'd be the bulk of it. Plus pretty much every one of those services listed is ranked higher in European countries than the US, particularly education where I think you're near the bottom of the rankings of OECD countries (and below Vietnam in the PISA tests) - and that's including private education.

[UndercoverElephant]

It is hard to fifty percent out of a rich man IN AMERICA. IN AMERICA he will devote five percent to accountants, tax lawyers, and political contributions to lower his bill...

Fixed it for you. The US is not the whole world. Things work a little differently outside the US.

Are you saying that calculated self interest and greed are exclusively American traits?

The exclusively American trait is the idea that having a government which raises taxes from the people is some sort of fundamental abuse of their human rights.

It is summed up perfectly in the following youtube video (which is narrated with an English voice maybe to give it some sort of credibility, I don't know). It's trying to explain to people why a government raising taxes in order to fund public education is such a bad thing, by giving an analogy with one person being asked to pay to help put another person's child through college:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGMQZEIXBMs

The person who wrote the script clearly believes that it is a moral outrage that he's forced to contribute taxes to pay to educate the children of people who could not afford to privately educate them themselves. As a result, he's trying to turn the clock back to a previous era when the children of the poor worked (usually ridiculous hours for very low pay) instead of going to school. Nowhere else in the developed world, apart from the US, could such a video be taken seriously. Everywhere else it is taken for granted that in a modern, civilised nation, the government should be responsible for providing a decent education for all children, and that this is in the greater interest of all members of that society.

It is not the level of taxation. It is what you get in return for your tax dollar.

What YOU get, personally? See...this is the problem. I live in a society. I don't just think about what *I* get for my "tax dollar". I think about it in terms of the society I live in, and expect everybody else to do the same.

Ever heard of Jimmy Carr? That's something else that would never happen in the US:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18531008

Comedian Jimmy Carr says he has "made a terrible error of judgement" over using a tax avoidance scheme.

In a statement on his Twitter account, Mr Carr said he was no longer involved in the K2 tax shelter.

Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday called Mr Carr's use of the scheme "morally wrong".

But the PM refused to comment on Take That star Gary Barlow's tax affairs - saying it was a different case - after Labour called for his OBE to removed.

The K2 tax scheme used by Mr Carr is a way of lowering the amount of tax paid. It is legal and Mr Carr made clear in his statement it was fully disclosed to HMRC.

In a series of messages on Twitter Mr Carr said: "I appreciate as a comedian, people will expect me to 'make light' of this situation, but I'm not going to in this statement.

"As this is obviously a serious matter. I met with a financial advisor and he said to me 'Do you want to pay less tax? It's totally legal'. I said 'Yes'."

"I now realise I've made a terrible error of judgement."

In the UK, even though what he did was legal, when the public found out what he'd done it would have finished his career if he'd not apologised and put things right. I get the distinct impression that if the same thing had happened in the US then most of the public would have thought "Good on him! He's making a stand for FREEDOM from the oppression of federal government taxes!!" From a European perspective, the mainstream US attitude to these things is so right wing as to be almost incomprehensible.

[peaceful_life]

One of the largest problems in housing is the planing system.
Land with planning permission costs at least £50k per 1/20 acre plot (circa £million /acre. Land without planning costs literally zero (I've seen free land) to circa £10k/acre for high quality agricultural land. It can get a bit silly with land adjacent to houses, folk wanting larger gardens, pony paddocks etc, but basically the planning system is responsible for two orders of magnitude difference in land value.

The good news is that this is a totally artificial situation, and one we can all do something about.

For example, the Ecological Land Cooperative recently bought agricultural land, and managed to gain planning permission on it for three small holdings. I give evidence at the planning enquiry.

In Wales there is new planning legislation called One Planet Development which specifically enables residential development on non development plan land. The Welsh system is very interesting as basic needs (energy, water, proportion of food, waste assimilation...) must be met from the land and buildings must be made from local, natural materials as far as piratical... low impact.

It is totally possible to build a decent house for £20-30k. It's totally possible to buy land for less than that.

If folk want to do something useful, support One Planet Development in Wales and make it a reality in the UK too.

Yep and I think you could build even cheaper than that, folk would do well to start a community land trust and influence councils via the the above examples.

On the subject of housing....
http://permaculturenews.org/2013/12/14/ ... iscovered/

[SleeperService]

Without immigration we would have had a declining population for decades. If a price of a thing has something to do with supply and demand more people wanting houses means higher prices, less people wanting houses means lower prices .

Absolutely spot on J2M!!!

So encouraging immigration achieves two goals for TPTB;

House prices keep rising so people can borrow more

Immigrant labour allows employers to race to the bottom and remunerate the workforce the least amount possible.

For a certain type of political outlook that is a Win-Win situation....until the inevitable happens and things go wrong.