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0 pointsEarw0rm2y ago0 comments

> It's not clear who has an availability of money. I'm aware of zero people within recent years buying a home without a mortgage. Availability of money has never been worse.

"Availability of money" includes the ability to apply for, and service the debt on, a mortgage.

> I don't think we're seeing 4x the living standard of 1970. It also doesn't explain that we see house prices increase by more than 4x relative to wages [1].

I don't remember 1970, but there's no particular reason we should expect to have 4x living standard.. competition for housing can eat up a much bigger slice of the overall pie, as long as people are willing to compete.

> But this would defend what I said, that demand outstrips supply. There is a saying at auctions: "it's only worth what somebody else is willing to pay for it."

100% - but if nobody CAN pay (the asking price), nobody will be willing to pay it. And that's where positional goods matter, because effectively people are jostling for a place in a ranked queue. The prices are a function of "how much money are the people in the queue able and willing to raise and deploy". And so it's natural to have situations where incomes might only go up by 50%, but house prices can rise MUCH more if interest rates are low and the bulk of that extra income is discretionary.

> It's not working, the NHS is failing. Where I live I cannot get an appointment any more. If I am lucky the doctor calls me and essentially prescribes anything I ask for. I recently saw a similar situation with midwifery.

Bad here too, but most of the staff are immigrants or of immigrant background so I find it hard to blame that on migration, it'd be a lot worse if they turned the taps off. It's more to do with our population (native Brits and 1960s/70s immigrants) being elderly, unhealthy and generally decrepit, and a health service that tries to do too much. It excels at keeping people alive, but it sucks at keeping them healthy.

> We are now at the state where children are deferred from starting school because there just are no place

Not the case here, in a high-immigration area: they're actually closing primary schools because there aren't enough kids to fill them.

> I don't think that is fair, the answer isn't to build on every square metre of the UK until it's gone. Besides, if they get rid of the train station car park, where will all the commuters park? (I've seen this one play out, they park everywhere else.)

They should walk or take the bus. I'm talking about stations that are at most a mile or so spread out and usually served by half a dozen bus routes, suburban zone 3 & 4 London. Wouldn't work further out where distances are longer.

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bArray2y ago· 1 in thread

> 100% - but if nobody CAN pay (the asking price), nobody will be willing to pay it. And that's where positional goods matter, because effectively people are jostling for a place in a ranked queue. The prices are a function of "how much money are the people in the queue able and willing to raise and deploy". And so it's natural to have situations where incomes might only go up by 50%, but house prices can rise MUCH more if interest rates are low and the bulk of that extra income is discretionary.

If this is the case, then the best way to lower house prices would be to get rid of mortgages entirely? I don't think this would work of course. We would simply see more foreign investors who have access to mortgages.

> Bad here too, but most of the staff are immigrants or of immigrant background so I find it hard to blame that on migration, it'd be a lot worse if they turned the taps off. It's more to do with our population (native Brits and 1960s/70s immigrants) being elderly, unhealthy and generally decrepit, and a health service that tries to do too much. It excels at keeping people alive, but it sucks at keeping them healthy.

My point is that after lots of immigration, we still have a massive recruitment crisis in the NHS. It never really solved the problem, and worse still, there are now more people using these services.

> Not the case here, in a high-immigration area: they're actually closing primary schools because there aren't enough kids to fill them.

If immigrants are not having children in the UK, then that would lead towards another crisis of an ageing population. Again, I believe increased immigration is a temporary solution.

> They should walk or take the bus. I'm talking about stations that are at most a mile or so spread out and usually served by half a dozen bus routes, suburban zone 3 & 4 London. Wouldn't work further out where distances are longer.

Not everywhere is London. Where I live, there are no buses to the train station. People commute by car up to 30 minutes to catch the train.

Earw0rmOP2y ago

Getting rid of mortgages rather illustrates my point. You'd lower prices but also destroy people's ability to afford/buy... anything.

Prices are a function of people's ability to access money, not their direct income.

And to your last point.. they need to build housing in places where there's the infrastructure to support it, or build the infrastructure. Building to suburban-like density in areas with a rural-like level of services (not just transport but shops, schools, leisure) is a recipe for misery.

The big new housing developments they're putting in outside midsize town ring roads are a case in point. Too far to walk to the centre (and indirect routes, because of the ring road), but the centre itself doesn't have room for them to park cheaply. No bus so no independence for teens. Nothing at all to do on the development itself. And that's before we get to the quality and design of the actual builds.

It's American style living done on the cheap. At least in the States they build large so there's room to do more at home, and the whole place is low density - their solution to the challenge of town centres is not to have town centres.

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