Wednesday 20 March 2013

The Home-Owner-Ist checklist

- council house right to buy discount increased? Check
- council house right to buy discount increased a bit more in London, so that MPs will have places to snap up in a few years? Check
- Bedroom Tax for snivelling ingrates in social housing? Check
- Council Tax increases kept to well below inflation for severalth year running? Check
- £1 billion in soft loans to residential landlords? Check
- income tax breaks for wealthy middle aged businessmen to build up a BTL portfolio? Check
- schemes to help First Time Buyers extended to Second Steppers? Check
- extension of NewBuy to "second hand" homes? Check
- increase limit for these schemes to houses costing £600,000? Check
- government to underwrite up to £130 billion in new mortgages? Check (see previous link)
- builders' share prices up five or ten per cent? Check
- extend the Funding for Lending Scheme? Check
- abandon the inflation target and print more money? Check
- new construction figures kept at the 100,000 mark, the lowest since the 1920s? Check
- £290 million subsidies to sell government owned land at undervalue to private developers? Check (emailed in by BobE)
- £225 million Danegeld to persuade developers to finally finish off half-finished stuff? Check

Several of these emailed in by MBK, who adds, "They are not just throwing the kitchen sink at it, they are throwing the plumbing at it and chucking in the boiler for good measure."

I've overlooked any, please leave a comment and I'll add them to the list.

12 comments:

Physiocrat said...

Do you mean Home-Owner-Ist or Home-Owner-1st? I think you should be more clear on this point. Or are you using Roman numerals?

Mark Wadsworth said...

Ph, I mean -Ist. It's an -ism, and has as much to do with homeownership as socialism has to do with society. Homeownership is the last thing which Home-Owner-Ists want!! Home-Owner-Ists don't want as many people as possible to own their own homes!

DBC Reed said...

@MW
I think you should include the big one:
"Hold down wages to make homeownership more attractive" or
"Raise unearned income from 'homeownership' above earned income".
Probably also "make inflation acceptable by providing a hedge against it.Anything but inflate wages commensurately)
Possibly and not entirely seriously,
"Make capitalism unworkable and destroy Western World".
(I think we should start suggesting homeownerists have been planted in occupied territory after the capitalists won the Cold War to carry on with economic warfare; or casting Cameron Osborne and Thatcher as "useful idiots".Its amazing how so shortly after "the fall of Communism") ,capitalism has collapsed as well.)
BTW Henry does not seem on message with Homeownerism; perhaps it should remain as the one undivided word.
(I can see the possibilty of a good-old-fashioned split here between upholders of different spelling conventions ,probably resurrecting the pointless question of who thought of the word first .[ I did.])

Mark Wadsworth said...

DBC: ""make inflation acceptable by providing a hedge against it.Anything but inflate wages commensurately."

Good one.

I covered that here

http://kaalvtn.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/w-i-want-to-have-my-cake-and-eat-it.html#6

Physiocrat said...

Don't you like the idea of Home-owners-first and bugger everything else?

buildingstoat said...

Mark, forgive me, I know I must be terribly dense but can you tell me in a nutshell what Home-Owner-Ism actually is? I have been reading, enjoying and I think mostly understanding your blog for a couple of years now but every now and then you come up with something that completely jams my brain and I realise that I haven't understood at all.

"Homeownership is the last thing which Home-Owner-Ists want!!"

Great phrase but........what does it actually mean? How can you be a home-oner-ist and not want to own a home? Or does it mean that I see property ownership as a way of making money and don't want too much competition? Or does it mean that people who make money from owning land and lobby for more favourable treatment from the government are even worse than Global Warming Scam Merchants, arms companies and all the other vested interests?

I quite see the absurdity of the government subsidising loans to try to 'kickstart the property market' when cheap money and a rampant housing market is part of the reason we are in this hole now but is there really some coherent philosophy/policy to all this?

Bayard said...

I wish I could remember who it was that said, back in the late '80s, I think, that the Tory party had ceased to be the party of the big landowners (that's "land" as in "farmland") and had become the party of the urban rentiers.

Physiocrat said...

Home Ownerism is the notion that a home is not just for living in but something that you buy to watch its value go up and up and up. And extension of this is BTL-ism and buy-for-your-student-children-ism, Because of the presumed voting power in this group of people, governments are following a homeowner-first-ism policy and to hell with all other considerations or indeed with everyone else.

It is a zero-sum-game and the policies that support it are a principal cause of the cyclic instability in the banking system and economy as a whole.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Ph, it's my spelling and I'm sticking to it.

BS: "Great phrase but........what does it actually mean?"

You've guessed most of the answer, and Phys has fleshed it out a bit.

1. Nearly everybody wants to own their own home. I have owned a few and it is a very nice feeling.

2. It's like everybody wants to breathe air. Air is free. Great.

3. But land is not free because it is owned by a monopoly-cartel. And these people tap into a very natural desire of 'everybody else' to want to own some.

4. Nobody considers themselves to be an "air owner" or "vote owner" because everybody gets fresh air and the right to vote for free.

5. But what if a monopoly-cartel did legally own all the air or all the votes, and they could charge you loads of money to breathe it or to be able to vote?

6. These people would have a brilliant source of income (backed up by the force of the state), and these people would be "Air-Owner-Ists" or "Vote-Owner-Ists".

"Or does it mean that I see property ownership as a way of making money and don't want too much competition?"

yes.

"Or does it mean that people who make money from owning land and lobby for more favourable treatment from the government are even worse than Global Warming Scam Merchants, arms companies and all the other vested interests?"

Yes.

See also my exaplanation and handy Venn Diagram here.




B, I can't remember either but it is true.

Ph, it's not a zero-sum game, it is a massively negative sum game.

Bayard said...

BS, Home-Ownerism also taps into the desire amoungst the British, evident for centuries past, to move up a step on the social ladder by ceasing to have an income from actual work and acquiring an income from rents, thus being elegible to join the landed gentry. However, then, if you wanted to do that, you had to earn or inherit your fortune first. Now, thanks to the economic circumstances which the government is trying to perpetuate, you can do the whole thing on borrowed money, rents on housing being so much greater than rents on money (interest).

Robin Smith said...

You forgot to mention: MrGeorgeClarkIsm

But I think you got it in free gifts to property hoarders who are too feckless to build and be able to sell property an an open market, so need help with it. Social enterprise really. Or IllFare

Its nto even a negative sum game. Its all relative.

Air, Land, Stuff. Careful not to confuse wealth with value. Air currently has value in use but not exchange until it is owned by someone. Then it has value in exchange not from production or doing work, but from the obligation others must pay you for it.

All wealth has value. But not all that has value is wealth. What even Smith and all after him except one got wrong.

{step off soap box}

Robin Smith said...

The Ministry of Wealth Budget
http://gco2e.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-game-ministry-of-wealth-budget.html