Fun Online Polls: Home-Owner-Ism & Cheryl Cole née Tweedy

Here are the rather surprising results from last week's Fun Online Poll:

People value things more highly and use them more efficiently if...
... they have to work hard and put money aside to pay for them. - 97%
... they are 'free'; subsidised by the taxpayer; or bought with easy credit. - 3%

And why is that surprising? Because in Home-Owner-Ist economics, the reverse is true:

- People are encouraged to buy the biggest house they can possibly afford with the biggest mortgage. The only reason that prices rose as high as they did was because of a corresponding credit bubble. But in Home-Owner-Ism, falling prices are seen as A Bad Thing so the banks have to be bailed out (by the income tax payer) and forced to lend.

- Most people who own their own homes will have bought them fairly cheaply more than ten years ago and ought to have just paid off the mortgage by now. They no longer have to pay anything towards their houses, apart from a smidge of Council Tax, but as we know, property taxes, however low, are the most hated taxes - in a Home-Owner-Ist economy, VAT of 20% and higher rate income tax of 50% are quite acceptable taxes, because they are paid by 'somebody else'.

- What is land ownership if not the right to a future stream of taxpayer-funded subsidies? If you rent somewhere, you pay for the cost of the state out of income tax, and then pay all over again for the value of what the state does in rent. But if you take out a huge loan and buy a house, you think that you are getting it all for free - you are not, you have just paid a lump sum instead. And the state is ready to 'help' you if you are struggling with your mortgage, i.e. getting the income tax payers and savers to bail out the banks and subsidise the interest on your mortgage.

- The NIMBYs know that all things being equal, they can increase the scarcity value of their houses by getting the government to restrict new supply, so the NIMBYs clearly value their easily earned windfall gains over the hard work that home builders put into creating something new that is of additional value to society, and the NIMBYs need potential buyers to take out large mortgages to buy existing houses rather than smaller mortgages to buy new houses.

- And so on. I am sure you can think of dozens of other examples to illustrate how Home-Owner-Ism is in fact the complete opposite of what it claims to be.
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Something else that strikes me is that is seems highly unlikely that Cheryl Cole née Tweedy can't possibly have had malaria. I reckon she was just a bit tired and wanted to take a few weeks off but without appearing lazy, so she and her publicists came up with the story that she had malaria, which serves the useful purposes of reminding us that Cheryl had been in Africa a while back doing something for charidee plus also making us feel sorry for her.

But what do you think? Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.