You might not own your house in the first place. House prices fluctuate. Even if you do own the house in which you live, its value is in no sense income. What are you supposed to do, go and live up a tree?
And so on, and on, and on.
The tearing to pieces of this donkey daft proposal should lead to the tearing to pieces of the equally pernicious and iniquitous Council Tax.
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It sounds a reasonable enough proposal to those of us who dont live in houses "worth" £1 million
ReplyDeleteHow do you know that you don't? Who is to decide? What if, after several decades of occupation, you suddenly find that it is, regardless of how little you paid for it?
ReplyDeleteWell you will note that I used the word "worth" in iquotation marks indicating that I am a bit skeptical about houses actually being "worth" anything at all.
ReplyDeleteAs I bought this house in 1993 when I was 41 years old its highly unlikely that I will live long enough to worry about several decades of occupation.
When we bought this house it was done with a mortgage (now paid up) which was of course based on the income of my wife and self.
Due to a new rating system (we dont have poll tax here) it was determined as "worth" four times the purchase price just eleven years after purchase.
And was "worth" a figure that would have been outside our aspirations if purchasing it. Our incomes had not risen four times.
As my #1 son had just got married, I implored them to hold off buying as it was obvious houses were not "worth" the money demanded.
His generation found itself in the position of adjusting their aspirations downwards.
I am therefore elighted that the bottom has fallen out of the unsustainable property bubble.......another thing that can be laid at the feet of the repulsive Thatcher.
Oh, a long-running gripe of this blog has been the obsession with rising house prices.
ReplyDeleteThe explosion in house prices has meant that most younger middle or upper-working-class people stand no chance of living out the middle-aged peak of their powers in properties remotely resembling the ones in which they grew up.
"Bricks and mortar" do not, at least ordinarily, constitute an "investment". They constitute a place to live.
Exactly so.
ReplyDeleteIs it true that Owen Temple has asked you not to stand as he is worried that you will take all his votes? I overheard him saying something to that effect after the last AAP meeting.
ReplyDeleteI can't specifically remember the last time I spoke to Owen Temple. I don't mean that maliciously. Our paths simply haven't crossed.
ReplyDeleteOn topic, please.
This is clearly a leaf out of the Geoist book - there's a lot of it about in the Lib Dems - as other bloggers have observed today as well.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you about house prices. They are still well overvalued in the UK and I gather that the OECD for one also thinks this. You only have to compare the price of even the bottom end of the market with ordinary wages in the area to see that there is a gross mismatch.
But as Guido also notes, with dismay in his case (surprise!) Georgeist policies would most likely keep house and land prices down.
I know some who are ardent advocates of carefully structured land taxes to replace income taxes in a tax neutral way, and while I can't say I've thought it over too thoroughly as yet (sigh, thinks of all the other things to be done) they do seem to have several points to recommend them.