EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

But think of all the poor property tv house buying show presenters you'd be putting out of a job.

19% of MPs, 28% of Tory MPs

Three times more Tory landlords than all the other parties then (123 total landlords, of which 92 are Tory). Be interested to see what the difference in scale is - how much income is generated by each parties MPs due to renting. I'm sure it's all declared somewhere transparently right?

19% of MPs, 28% of Tory MPs

Well yes, but only one bunch are in power.

I assume the remaining tories own their properties through shell corporations as part of their elaborate tax avoidance setups.

The article linked above does give some examples of this

They have a scheme as well where you get government cash to do up properties BUT you must charge social housing rent afterwards. Pretty cool.

But you still have the "second houses" problem with people buying holiday homes and pricing out locals...

That to one side, we need to wean the country off rent-seeking behaviours and onto more productive means of making money.

The country? There are around 1.8m private landlords. It gets a lot of press, but it isn't something that everyone does.

But yes, I get the point - it would be better if the money flowing around the private rental market was put in to something 'better' (Bitcoin?!). Local companies for the sake of localness however I suspect are long way down on the average investors list of stuff to chuck money at - we have access to the internet, we are capable finding out what is likely or not to provide a return at a risk acceptable to the average joe, and it's usually composite stuff that spreads the risk around.

(I suspect a lot of the stuff that the posho MPs rent out is not stuff they would sell if they could not rent them out profitably - they would simply hoard it and it would become non productive)

So, communism?

I jest, but not entirely.

I keep getting told that I think too much and I predict responses (both physical and verbal), and modify my behaviour based on my predicted response, rather than just talking to people and waiting for a response, so let me play out how I think UBI would go down.

-Here's free money because you've got no job opportunities any more
-I don't want free money, I want to work for a living
-There's no jobs you can do any more because you're really good at things that aren't done here any more
-but why can't we do those things
-because of so many reasons but mostly some companies got really big, priced out the competition, and fucked you and many other small and medium companies over
-I'm no scrounger
-people who get free money aren't scroungers
-but that's what we've been told for years
-do you want your money or not?

Can we recover from the current state of Capitalism?

There seem to be some leaps in that. Particularly using solely London to prove that the UK pays significantly more in rent than other European countries. That may or may not be true but picking one city from the UK and multiple cities from other countries leaps out at me as cherry picking your stats.

I think it would play out like this

• Here's free money so you can do what you like...within reason
  
• Awesome, cheers!
  
  

And if they want to set up an unprofitable coal mine, chimney sweeping operation, mediocre mass production bike factory, then hey, they could, assuming it wasn't deemed environmentally catastrophic. But you'd hope they'd do something less damaging to their long term health and less like banging their heads against a brick wall, like getting some training in modern business and industry - China and the robots aren't going to go away.

-There's no jobs you can do any more because you're really good at things that aren't done here any more

Out of interest, what are these things where we have a willing and able highly trained workforce that cannot work because we don't do...those things that they can do?

A lot of the benefits for individuals have been phased out and you're still taxed at your rate now. Gradually phasing out is a much more stable approach for the market.

Extreme rent-seeking at best delivers zero benefit. However, providing accommodation encompasses a whole host of services and benefits to society.

I'd be surprised if private rental accommodation makes up a significant % of the most wealthy's portfolios. I suspect you'd get a better and lower risk yield with a secure long term lease to a supermarket. Happy to be proved wrong on that though.

Rent-seeking is not confined to the property rental market, it's an economic behaviour that seeks to increase wealth of the individual/organisation performing said behaviour/action without creating new wealth.

Local in these terms means to the economic area you are within, which is currently the EU but will soon be England and Wales.

At the small end I rent my garage, I would like to buy it but the garage company won't sell it because they get £1,200/year from me for doing absolutely fuck all. There's absolutely no motivation for them to sell unless a) they have a sudden urgent need for a lot of capital or b) rental income becomes undesirable due to (say) tax.

A while back there was a cash machine that had £20 notes in the £10 note dispenser. People queued and took out £10 successively until they'd hit their daily limit and the machine was empty.

I'm sure people interviewed for ITN would all trot out that line, as would the DM comments box. However, everyone would take it.

The bigger problem is when the UBI is only enough to survive and you can't get a job to supplement your wages to buy an iPhone, Dualit Toaster, go on holiday, etc.

If they did then only people with the capital to buy it would be able to use it. Is that intrinsically more fair?

Rent-seeking is not confined to the property rental market, it's an economic behaviour that seeks to increase wealth of the individual/organisation performing said behaviour/action without creating new wealth.

Yeah I know. But your example. Anyway.

Local in these terms means to the economic area you are within, which is currently the EU but will soon be England and Wales.

I don't think I really understand what you mean so I'll bow out.

Why do we need to OWN housing anyway?

Berlin has a system with long tenacy but very high tenant protection.

Here there is low tenant protection, low protecting against price hikes, low interference of the government on poor housing, very few social housing groups/companies that are non-profit that do housing (Northern Ireland still has a few, you won't get luxury housing but it is usually quite adequate, such groups are common in The Netherlands) so we all get pushed towards owning a house, which we then can't afford.

Not ideal :)

In the countries with decent protection from tenants there is a significant level of housing stability which is a desirable benefit. The flip side is that you end up with a relatively small group of mega money landlords who own most of the country's property.

In Switzerland, the rental market is mostly controlled by old money. These are generally families who have enormous property portfolios built up over generations and no pressure to raise rents as being a landlord is by and large seen as a safe but slow earner. In other words, you don't have accidental landlords with huge mortgages with pressure to raise rents to pay those off.

Those comments interestingly mirror Nick Hannauer's take on middle-out economics and the increasing need for it. Essentially he says that capitalism is a good system because it incentivises people to solves others' problems (and we should measure this in terms of actual life changes, not income), but capitalist systems inherently tend towards inequality (because money makes money). This presents a potentially catastrophic eventuality whereby capitalism destroys itself because the wealth, and hence spending power, ends up concentrated in the hands of too few people to sustain a capitalist system.

He says that unless we act to properly reimburse workers, through an effective living wage and similar regulations, in order to create a comfortably-off middle class who have enough money to be both consumers and innovators, then we will end up with a system of rentier capitalism and ultimately neo-feudalism and a police state and/or violent revolution.

Whoa, cool post :)

@freddo I feel like you're finally talking sense on here, earlier I must admit it felt a bit condescending and antagonistic...

I am generally condescending and antagonistic. Thanks for noticing! :p

...the way you came across was the same as the people you were/are arguing/discussing with. ie, you view some on here as very blinkered and unwilling to discuss the "real" motivation for voting brexit by leavers but at the same time your view of those people is the same! However I will concede that now you're actually opening up, you are practicing what you preach.

I'm not sure. I was motivated to respond to several pages of "all brexit voters are racist tory gammon cunts". My point throughout is that most Brexit voters, particularly the "type 4 group" are not really racist at all, and Remainers who won't debate are just as much a part of the problem.

That out of the way, I 100% agree with you about the lower class leavers voting that way as a result of the effects of un-checked globalisation...lack of funding in general but specifically youth services and education
yep

I know I keep saying this but this is about what we do next, not how we undo the causes. That chance was missed.

And (contentious post alert): most people are more-or-less rational agents. Irrationality comes in to play in extreme situations, such as when we feel we are threatened. A <2% majority in the referendum has left Leavers feeling weak and vulnerable. For Remainers, who for obvious reasons feel threatened by Leavers' actions (ie. voting for brexit, jingoism, murder etc), the temptation is to also react irrationally (hence "racist tory gammon cunts"). If half of the country is attacking the other half, we will never get to a sensible resolution of the country's problems. IMO many Leavers and Remainers actually feel the same about austerity, lack of education, skills, etc. If we can propose a way to fix that first and on a nonpartisan basis, Brexit can be cancelled. If we keep calling these people thick racist Tory cunts we're all fucked.

Berlin has a system with long tenacy but very high tenant protection.

And a massive housing shortage because it doesn't make commercial sense for anyone to build new residential properties.

If we keep calling these people thick racist Tory cunts we're all fucked.

This is very true. We should have learned from Trump's election that saying (effectively) "You're a hateful bunch of racist, misogynist, thick-as-pigshit, fascist scumbags! And you should vote with us!" is not an effective campaigning technique.

Is that the only reason?

Netherlands has a shortage due to lack of keeping up but that is also a problem for the social housing co-ops (which got hurt a lot by the global stock market crash due to the property crash as they had also invested in stocks...)
Dublin has a shortage due to lack of investment/keeping up AND people objecting to flats being built nearby
Some cities have zoning problems as well, where councils refuse to rezone old shops/industrial areas

There are no government built houses in Berlin at all?

many Leavers and Remainers actually feel the same about austerity, lack of education, skills, etc. If we can propose a way to fix that first and on a nonpartisan basis, Brexit can be cancelled

This. Although there's no time.