Find me an idle rich person outside a soap opera.
Granted there are trust fund types but they support the economy with their purchases.
Do people Iâve known personally count, or do they have to be Googleable? Because if theyâre Googleable, chances are theyâre doing something with their lives. If youâre prone to goalpost-moving, youâll justify any movement or attempt at entrepreneurship, no matter how miserable or lazy, as lack of idleness. You propose a strange game, the only winning move is not to play.
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I wasnât trying to set you up. I was merely talking economics.
The wealthy spend lots of real dollars in their community, supporting others as a result.
Resentment of affluence and supposed idleness misses the point.
You issued a challenge. I was musing on the impossibility of the challenge as a matter of synthesis.
Then why did you attempt make one with specific regard to idleness?
The wealthy need a finite quantity of goods and services. Their wealth is often far in excess of their lifestyle, and the rest of the money is used to replace labor in an economic system where wealth is the synthetic product of capital. If you ascribe to the idea of scarcity, which is the cornerstone of modern economic theory, then the capital used to produce wealth is pulling resources from somewhere. It doesnât spontaneously combust into existence. What you find is that wealth is often used to deprive others of wealth, or is built on the labor that actually produces wealth at the expense of the laborer. Itâs not âresentment of affluenceâ to think that people who produce the goods and services that allow the community to thrive should receive a fair-share of the benefits. Itâs about equity. Thatâs if youâre a socialist. And the economic system, whether you like it or not, survives based on equity. See, the people on BoingBoing by and large actually like capitalism, and want it to survive. Read the comments carefully: People are okay with making money off rent. People here are complaining.
If you donât like capitalism, if you donât want it to survive: You donât complain. You let things fail and keep spare torches and guillotine blades in your basement.
Thatâs a cold, hard reality of economics. One of those realities like a shark biting off a surferâs leg, or a papercut causing septic shock. Nature doesnât give one fuck about you and your theories, and is actively hostile to ordered systems.
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I think this is just a zoning problem: just require the owner occupy the home.
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Someone explain why threatening graffiti keeps popping up at the top of articles about the lack of affordable housing?
Perhaps in parts of the US, but in the UK the average house sells at around ÂŁ220000. The ÂŁ1 million limit will affect only a very small minority.
Things used to be like this; when I grew up there was tax relief on mortgages for owner occupiers. However, the system has been changed by successive governments so that buy-for-let landlords get tax relief, owner-occupiers do not. It is pretty blatant. The idea of the Conservatives was that no buy for let landlord would ever vote Labour for fear of seeing their tax benefits eroded.
Also, housing benefit was introduced. In the ultimate porkbarrel, this means that if private landlords charge rents beyond the means of tenants, taxpayer money is used to fund the landlords. This of course artificially inflates house prices and rents. However, this was not purely a Conservative market distortion; New Labour (right wing) wanted this because many of its MPs benefited from the system. (One of them, David Blunkett, reportedly owns about 14 houses and Blair has his own small London property empire.)
An actual free and undistorted market in housing would go some way to solving the problem, especially as, if it were truly free, councils would be allowed to build houses again. Another essential fix is to allow councils to re-zone marginal land; the present system maintains an artificial land shortage in the South-East, where the Conservative vote is high and house prices are higher.
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220k would buy me a very nice house in the north east. I work in Blyth, which mightnât be to everyoneâs taste, but I quite like it, and I could buy the nicest house in town for far less than that. Shit, anywhere except London and maybe Edinburgh you could do very well with that kinda scratch to buy a house.
Apart from the intense cold and the wind driving off the Urals I like the Northeast a lot. But London house prices are 5 times higher like for like, which tends to keep Londoners who own houses desperate to stay there and watch their asset value rise. Paradoxically perhaps, high London house prices are one of the reasons for the lack of investment in the North.
However, if you remember the Tokyo boom and bust and what it did to the Japanese economy, London is going exactly the same way and it could all end in tears before bedtime. Unfortunately when it happens all the Londoners in negative equity will drag the rest of us down with them.
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Very rarely the case.
Someone from London buys a house down here. They call in London interior designers. Work is done by builders and decorators who could come from anywhere. The Range Rovers come from the Midlands. The foreign holidays spend money abroad. The children go to boarding schools near London. Food is delivered by Waitrose and Ocado.
They actually benefit the community much less than much poorer people who actually live and work here. Trickle down is a myth.
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Intense cold? Why no, man. Yer divvint even need a coat today, how. Its lovely out.
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This Blyth? Looks like it doesnât usually get below freezing. Why would you need a coat? Maybe a light jacket.
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Thatâs the badger. Itâs usually nicer here at work weather-wise than at home in Newcastle. Itâs a little run down, but fuck, is it cheap to live in. Theyâre trying to reinvigorate the place with renewable energy industry but itâs still pretty poor. You could have a Victorian ships captains house of considerable size for no more than 120k though. Iâm thinking of moving here cos Iâm sick of all the student halls been built in my area.
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It wouldnât surprise me at all to learn that picture was taken in December.
We were amazed years ago when we visited friends up north from the South Coast town we then lived in, and discovered how big their house was. And that it had cost less than oursâŚ
Oops. Hostility alert.
Things do spontaneously appear these days, which tears the thought of scarcity apart, and with it that sort of marxist seeth.
Never before have we seen entire industries form out of the thin whiff of nothing. And thus is just the beginning.
But donât tell that to those bent on a career on a street corner with a tin cup.
Yep. Think away lad.
I have friends in Reading ( where I was born) and do well, and while they take hols in Spain the kit they buy is local
I have no idea what this means.
