Homey Queen Kirstie, commenting on the IF Report at the BBC:
Television property show presenter Kirstie Allsopp says it is not fair to pick on the elderly (1) as they usually want to hang on to their homes for their children's sake. "It's not house hoarding. This is their home, (2)" she says. "A lot of that generation have done far more in life and taken far less than we have. (3)"
Wrong on so many levels, it's difficult to know where to start...
1) The system as it currently stands is massively stacked against young people, there's always a trade off here. Faced with a choice between buying an affordable house today, paid for out of your own money, or your parents inheriting your grandparent' overvalued house (quite possibly burdened with MEW debt), I know which most young people would choose. In any event, the real beneficiaries of Home-Owner-Ism are Baby Boomers, not those people who "fought in two world wars", i.e. everybody over the age of about 111; to have even fought in one world war you'd have to be aged at least 82...
2) OK, so they are not house hoarding (i.e. over-occypuing) they want to stay there because it is their home. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but your home is where you live, if you move from one house to another, you still have a home, don't you? Or possibly, they are house hoarding (i.e. over-occupying) because they want their children to inherit more housing than otherwise. Which is it to be?
3) Clearly, old people have 'done more' because they've been around for longer, but how does she define 'taken less'? Clearly, until the 1970s of so, people who bought houses usually bought new houses so they were merrily using up The Hallowed Green Belt, why is it so terrible if today's young people want to do the same? And as a matter of fact, today's working age population are paying much more in tax/NI than previous generations did and will receive much lower pensions much later in life.
Ms A declared her interest in all of this on Question Time a year or two ago and pointed out that her parents paid two shillings and sixpence for their London house several decades ago and it is now worth £2 million. But if you think about Inheritance Tax (not a good tax, but there you go), then if her parents really wanted their children to inherit as much as possible, they would down size pronto presto and give the net proceeds to their children, in the hope that they (the aged parents) live another seven years.
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
It's for the cheeldren!
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15 comments:
"they usually want to hang on to their homes for their children's sake"
It's more a question of "their children want them to hang onto their homes for their children's sake". I suspect quite a few eldeerly people would dearly love to get rid of their big draughty old houses and move into a comfy small place with low upkeep, but would feel guilty about doing it.
Of course, quite a few don't want to move genuinely because it is their home and they have lived there for many years. Ms Allsopp's agenda is pretty clear from her comments though. You're quite right - it's all about using the property as an investment.
In this context "taken" is a code word implying failure to meet approval of norms of egalitarianism or environmentalism.
it's all about using the property as an investment.
But it's a crap investment, as Mark says in the post:
then if her parents really wanted their children to inherit as much as possible, they would down size pronto presto and give the net proceeds to their children, in the hope that they (the aged parents) live another seven years.
or if it's really 2 million quid, then send it abroad (i.e. not the EU, Australia, Canada or the US) where HMRC can't get its hands on it.
It might be their house but it's certainly not their land value, pilfered from others through planning permission and publicly funded infrastructure
AC: "their children want them to hang onto their homes for their children's sake" Yup, exactly.
TDK, the Homeys are practising neither egalitarianism nor environmentalism. Not that those two things are high on my list of priorities.
Anon, that's called 'tax evasion'.
Joe, that's fightin' talk :-)
As it happens, it strikes me that it is a mathematically verifiable fact that the value of the benefit (from society) that any landowner receives is exactly equal to the cost of the burden (to society) imposed on 'everybody else' (including other landowners)*.
So really, it's irrelevant whether land was acquired honestly and innocently out of hard-earned income, or simply stolen from others, the point is to charge people for the external cost of their internal benefit.
* This relationship does NOT apply to freely traded goods and services. A neighbour may spend a large chunk of his earnings on a nice new kitchen and impose no burden on whatsoever. Or he may spend a fiver on a vuvuzela and completely ruin your sleep for weeks.
As it happens, it strikes me that it is a mathematically verifiable fact that the value of the benefit (from society) that any landowner receives is exactly equal to the cost of the burden (to society) imposed on 'everybody else' (including other landowners)*.
The main thing with land is that there's no value added. When you buy a kitchen from Ikea, there's a company somewhere in the world making the units in a factory, meaning they cost a lot less than your time and effort to make them. That's real "value added".
Yes.
It's all about reciprocity.
Land Rent-seeking is non-reciprocal.
So is income-tax, sales tax etc.
There's only one reciprocal tax, the LVT.
AC1
JT, it's worse than 'no value added', rent-seeking is 'value destroyed', just like taxing private sector income to fund public sector non-activity or the welfare state, or indeed bankers.
AC1, ah, you free market capitalists with yer old fashioned notions about getting what you pay for and paying for what you get, whatever would the world come to if we followed that sort of nonsensical rule?
I think the "homeownerist defence" is that they simply and understandably want to give their kids the best chance in life (by handing down land wealth - long history of this, or aspiration to this in the UK!). Of course these are the same people who say that they believe in a meritocracy!!!
If they really don't want to be patronising to their kids they should separate their mouths from their money and support policies that allow people to do well because of hard work and enterprise rather than unearned land values.
QP, but they're not doing any handing down, are they? It's not 'wealth cascading down the generations' but wealth cascading up.
If we take Homey propaganda literally, they wouldn't force their children and grandchildren to live in one-bed flats (thus minimising their children's land wealth, to the extent that private land ownership is real wealth in the first place), they'd either willingly swap places with them or allow nice new houses to be built for their children.
This is true but "homeownerist" parents don't see the taking, they just see the bequithing.
MW - why cant you just "do a financial planner" and get yourself on the same show as her. You'd be able to rip her to shreds and I imagine it would be some of the most memorable and amusing television I might ever see in my life. I wouldnt know where to start (in terms of making it happen) but I think you should explore the possibility.
QP, maybe so, maybe not.
Anon, aha, but the Homeys already have all their propaganda in place, all she has to do trot out the old cack about "If you want to tax my hardworking parents who fought in two world wars out of their family home then you are a Commie" and so on.
I see another human shield here - the pensioners who fought in/lived through the war being forced to sell their home of sixty years/family home of five generations. The reality is that said pensioners are probably living in a house they bought in the eighties with no family ties and if it really was a family home, they would have moved out and handed onto their children anyway to avoid death duties. In the past the owners of landed estates had no compunction in moving out elderly widows/parents so that the eldest son could move in, the moment the old man died/got past it.
B, sure, and according to the Mailexpressgraph "the shock of a move could kill vulnerable elderly widows who fought in two world wars etc".
Wot? Nobody's expecting them to lug all their own furniture round, and if they have spare kids for grandchildren, then either a) they aren't that frail or b) the parents of said grandchildren should be happy to chip in to pay the tax.
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