I linked to the poll over at HousePriceCrash on Friday, who tend to be a bit more left wing, to see if this would change the outcome, but it doesn't seem to have done (also thanks to Alice Cook for linking). Out of six hundred votes cast, the response to the question "What would you like the government to do ..." was as follows (percentages in brackets show the results from those voting via this 'blog):
Outright winner:
None of the above - 80% (89%)
Also rans:
Use taxpayers' money to build 'affordable housing' - 17% (7%)*
All of the above - 1% (3%)
Use savers' money to subsidise borrowers - 1% (1%)
Use taxpayers' money to prop up house prices - 1% (0%)
So there we have it. The government must assume that all their desperate measures to prop up house prices will buy them votes (and let's be realistic, the Tories and LibDems aren't offering any serious alternatives) but whose votes exactly? Labour are portraying the Tories as the "Do Nothing" party (which they aren't) but "do nothing" would appear to be the most popular policy of all.
So this week's Fun Online Poll gives you a chance to guess why thirty per cent of voters are likely to vote Labour.
* As an aside, there is absolutely no need to spend taxpayers' money on 'affordable housing'. We've already got enough social housing for the poorest twenty per cent of the population, if we want housing to be 'affordable' for the better-of poor in social housing and for everybody else (including those on council house waiting lists), all we need to do is liberalise planning laws and replace Council Tax etc with Land Value Tax, which is effectively what we had in the 1920s and 1930s, and it worked just fine.
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15 comments:
Two points.
My browser is not showing the option '30% of people are stupid and/or malignant'.
Is this cos I is usin' Firefox?
...and only because you obviously already know about it and not because I am a lazy sod, will you please do a piece on the referred 1920s and 1930s and the reasons for changing?
STB.
STB, it doesn't show "Because half the electorate derive most of their income from the state" either.
D'you mean why house prices were low and stable in the 1920s and 1930s?
Methinks you reckon your readership are all socialists in that the choices only have one logical option for anyone with half a brain. I would like to think that us right-wing libertarians need more mental stimulation with the choices?
Yes and a piece on the 20s & 30s and reasons for change would be good?
Your response to Scots Toryb came up prior to my last
Yes to your question and why the reason for change - also a 'laymans' guide to LVT?
To summarise a fine article I read recently (but now cannot track down for the life of me), in the 1920s and 1930s we had a Depression (of course) but new home constructions chugged along nicely, even though prices didn't go up, if anything they went down (deflation). And this was not social housing, it was privately built. Why? a) The tax system (there was something vaguely akin to Land Value Tax b) this was prior to Town & Country Planning Act 1947 so building land was much cheaper and c) the banks were lending sensibly.
This happy state of affairs continued until the mid/late sixties when they scrapped Schedule A taxation (a tax on imputed rental income from home ownership) and that's when the bubble era really kicked off in the UK.
Why LVT?
a) because although it is broadly based on 'ability to pay' (i.e. rich people live in expensive houses) it is not actually a tax on income or production and so does not deter it - a tax on employment reduces employment, a tax on investment reduces investment but a tax on land (not buildings, just the underlying site value, ignoring the buildings) does not reduce the amount of land;
b) because it would keep property prices low and stable (it would act like a higher interest rate on the non-bricks and mortar element) and
c) land values depend largely on what people in that neighbourhood do or provide and without the protection of The State and the legal system, land would be worthless (unless you can afford a private army) so there is some natural justice in it.
d) because LVT encourages local councils and the government to spend money sensibly - it would focus their minds on spending money on things that makes each council, and hence the whole of the UK a safer, cleaner etc place to live. And no council would want to set up a gypsy camp because land values (and hence their tax receipts) would plummet.
Wiki do a good layman's guide.
There are leftie LVT enthusiasts who'd like to see LVT in addition to existing taxes, moderates like me who like to use to as a straight replacement for council tax, business rates, inheritance tax (and who'd like to see other taxes cut anyway, different topic), and 'single taxers' who think it should be the only tax (there is a lot of intellectual coherence to that view).
An LVT could also raise enough to provide a citizens dividend that would be enough to replace the system of failure rewards called the welfare state.
and the citizens dividend is a powerful too to keeping the state lean, focussed and efficient.
too = tool.
Alan Crisp's post -grad thesis on the Net gives a good account of housing in 1920's and 1930's.
It is called The working-class owner-occupied house in the 1930's.
The introduction (in fact some way in) is the best bit showing all those 1930's semis ( along the A3 etc)came from coming off the God Standard and the enlarging of banks capital bases by the gov buying and converting gilts .(Is n't this quantitative easing?)
The big differnce was low land prices with the knock-out of farm incomes by the Depression.
Tsk! Gold Standard of course, but to some people the mispelling is nearer the mark.
DCB, do you mean this?
http://www.pre-war-housing.org.uk/default.htm
Just call me Dave: this initials business is because there's another David Reed who writes to the papers from North London with not disssimilar stuff to mine.
Yes that pre-war housing.org.uk address looks about right.But I just Google his name and the title of the thesis.
Should not one of the possible answers to your quiz have some reference to the growing malignancy of the BBC?
Thanks for the response and the links.
STB
I assume the reason "falling educational standards" means 30% of people are now so badly educated they can't understand any word longer than 6 letters, or know what TWAT means (as in "Gordon Brown is a total twat").
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