The election 2015

Warbler said:
OK, I'll try and make you deal if you're so confident (for as I said, I don't know what the results will yield)

I'll ressearch it, and source the work etc if you accept the following

1: The percentage of personal income paid in rent is a more important indicator (net income is ultimately a big motivator of people is it not? - how many people would work for free etc?)
2: Some sort of concession also needs to be made to the quality of housing that you get for this rent in order to complete the picture (not sure how I do that - but I'm open to suggestions)

I suspect that I'll discover that the renting population of the UK is being asked to pay a significantly larger chunk of their disposable on housing than the other countries you're seeking to benchmark against - but I don't know that.

I'm hypothesising that it's the continual drain of losing this money each month that then knocks into things like motivation and wage demands (ultimately productivity). If by contrast someone in Germany is getting high quality housing and retaining a signficant larger wedge of their income to support lifestyle and consumer choices, then their revealed preference to rent their accommodation is a perfectly rational choice


Deal? or if you don't think my line of investigation is fair, then please explain why, for what I'm surely doing is completing the equation by framing housing costs within the all critical paramter of an income domain
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Makes no sense because the regional variations will be huge in both countries

im not interested in any research.

we need more housebuilders and the planning controls need to certainly be loosened. Also we need a couple of new towns developed. The problem is that it is an issue that voters knee jerk vote against and longer term beneficiaries do not perhaps pick up on. Understandably so because if you are looking to buy you aren't looking 10 years ahead.

but that should not be the consideration and they need to do the right thing
 
clivex said:
Makes no sense because the regional variations will be huge in both countries

im not interested in any research.
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You can't tell someone to "just look it up" on the one hand, and then say "I'm not interested in any research" on the other. It does rather lend to the suspicion that you're running away from what I might find (and I confess, I've got little enthusiasm for wading through Eurostat - I'd hope someone else might have researched this).

Similarly, you can't say they'd be huge regional variations as an excuse either. Surely you understand that any national indicators are the composite picture of regional variations? In which case, you can't use them to justify your own tenuous argument if you're going to run away from them when used back. Come on, that's feeble. I'd be too embarrassed to say you can't use Germany as a benchmark because there might be a real regional discrepancy between Baveria and North Rhine Westphalia

I do know that about 8 years ago the percentage of income consumed by rent in the UK was about 30-33%. I don't know what it is today, and I have no idea how it compares with the countries you want to benchmark against (or perhaps aren't so keen to do so now). I think the important factor to appreciate though is that the calculation is the percentage of income. That should equalise income disparities. I'm hypothesing that with their more mature, better supplied, and better regulated resdiential letting industries the percentage of household income spent on renting accommodation in the three countries you were happy to benchmark against is lower than the UK, and that the stock of housing is of a higher quality (must admit I'm nervous about France on that one!)

The fact that you've been called out on it and that you're now seeking to duck the findings does make me curious as to find out what the figures are actually

But before (or if) I do, would you not accept that the percentage of income, allied to the quality of stock, is actually the more important issue here. This can be averaged using either the IQR or the 5% trimmed mean to eradicate outliers if you like?

I've otherwise got no problems with your assertion that we need to build new homes, and new towns (been arguing it for about 20 years). I would point out however that this government wholeheartedly opposed every single one of the 16 'expansion towns' put forward in 2007 when they were in opposition, and only now have they finally shown the slightest sign of coming round to the idea with Ebbsfleet
 
What are you talking about?

You have stated that "handing rent over" is (somehow) a disincentive to work. The proportion is neither here nor there. What point is the cut off then ? Ill stop working hard if my landlord pus my rent up. Yeah right

Frankly its just guessing and I don't believe it for a minute. I've never once pre judged someone's enthusiam to work on a team I've run on whether they rent or buy. That would be ludicrous

i say it again. Many successful economies have much higher numbers of renters than in the uk. Workaholic Italy has very high levels of ownership whereas lazy old Germany has much lower levels.

that kills your point stone dead and there's nothing more to say
 
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Aren't we in the uk more unusual in that most people want to own rather than rent?

( it will take more than you just throwing in the word bondage to try and keep my attention warbler - I wish I understood 5% of all the words you put down, but I can't make head nor tail of them most of the time!)
 
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Ah - I thought we were. I've seen things saying how many other countries have most people renting and just figured that the uk must be a bit weird being so fixated on owning. Having said that though, my mortgage is nowhere near a month what my friends pay in rent, so it makes much more sense to own If you can. ( to me anyway!)
 
OK curiousity did get the better of me, and I have had a go at this. The results are actually worse than I thought I'd find. I expected that a rental rank order would emerge that followed our perceptions of average salary and cost of living etc I expected therefore to see;

1: Switzerland
2: Germany
3: UK
4: France

As regards the percentage of income lost to paying rent, I was less sure about this as I thought it might equalise. I thought the higher standard of stock in countries like Switzerland and Germany in particular, would equalise their higher incomes through higher rents - I was wrong

In June 2015 the National House Federation completed a survey number crunching Eurostat which collects information that falls under their parameter of 'housing cost burden'. This surveys the percentage of income spent on resdiential rents.

Percentages first

My expectation of 30-33% has risen.

UK = 39.1%
Switzerland = 31.9%
France = 29.5%
Germany = 24.8%

* UK workers who rent their accommodation spend 23 minutes every hour working to pay for it
* The UK has the highest percentage take out of income in residential renting than any other single European country
* The only European country that comes close to the same figure is Spain (39%)
* The UK and Spain are the two outliers, but then the Spanish did follow the UK model, and probably has other ownership dynamics at play too where buy to rent is concerned (place in the sun etc)

The figures for average rental price is probably more grizzly though

UK = €902
Switzerland = €822
Germany = €600
France = €598

The cheapest country in the survey was Slovakia at €239 and 13.2% of income

By this token we would expect our hosuing stock to be the best in Europe if we're asking for prices some 33% higher than Germanys? I haven't found a quality indicator yet (I'm inclined not to bother). I think most of us would accept that the standard of housing in Germany and Switzerland is high. I've always formed the impression it's higher than ours and yet we charge 33% more and eat into our disposable by 15% more, for an inferior standard of housing with worse terms and conditions

So to complete Clive's picture. Yes the percentage of people renting accommodation in Germany might be higher (I don't know), but lets fill in the spaces. Do we think this might have something to do with the fact that they pay €300 a month less for it, and that they allow you to keep 15% more of your income? Also lets not lose sight of the fact that they get a better product too.

Now it begs supplementary questions

Who is paying for this rental burden? In the first case it's the tenants, but utlimately it goes upstream. It has to come from waged income, or benefits topped up by in work incentives like tax credits. This means the burden is shared by a combination of employers and the state.

If the burden falls on employers it becomes an operational overhead that they need to cover in the pricing structure of their goods or services. If you keep pushing that up, you risk losing competitiveness unless it comes with correpsonding productivity gains. If we could take some of this pressure out of the system by deflating the housing wage demand burden, we start to improve competitiveness. It ain't rocket sciene. The lower paid can accept a different wage structure if their own domestic overheads are lowered.

Alternatively government could tax more (there's always a chance we could get something back then). Most people would have little problem paying €1000 more tax if it came with a correspionding €3000 fall in their rent and a net gain of €2000 to their budget. Instead we've gone the other way. It's perverse. I say it's perverse because it's not as if the provision is beyond the supply of other providers. Indeed, the state could act as builder, job creator, and landlord, instead of paying upstream subsidies to some other entity to suck money out of the economy and drive down our own productivity and competitiveness

This is broken, and it needs urgent attention

The question you should be asking Clive is how come expensive countries like Switzerland, Germany and France can provide better quality housing for their citizens for about £3000 a year less than we do for ours. Role that out and wonder what the saving would be on our own welfare budget if we weren't asking the state or employers to subsidise housing. We might even perform a fag packet calculation in terms of tax yield if the Treasury were able to claw back just £1000 per person of the 8.3 million households the ONS say are renting. £8.3Bn a year. That's about 12% of all government spending.
 
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Long been a bit of a myth. Also I think in Germany and Switzerland it's particularly onerous to get a mortgage, which is the way some strange people would want it here, as we've seen on some threads

One thing I do agree with warbler (although he tries to say it in 100000 confused words) is that ownership must surely bring about a greater sense of commitment and responsibility. However, it's hardly cut and dried eitehr way. The other side of the coin though is that you have a less mobile labour force
 
clivex said:
What are you talking about?

You have stated that "handing rent over" is (somehow) a disincentive to work. The proportion is neither here nor there.
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No. The proportion is not "neither here nor there". That's one thing it most certainly isn't. The amount of net income one earns is a very important incentive to work, a critical one.
 
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Warbler said:
OK curiousity did get the better of me, and I have had a go at this. The results are actually worse than I thought I'd find. I expected that a rental rank order would emerge that followed our perceptions of average salary and cost of living etc I expected therefore to see;

1: Switzerland
2: Germany
3: UK
4: France

As regards the percentage of income lost to paying rent, I was less sure about this as I thought it might equalise. I thought the higher standard of stock in countries like Switzerland and Germany in particular, would equalise their higher incomes through higher rents - I was wrong

In June 2015 the National House Federation completed a survey number crunching Eurostat which collects information that falls under there parameter of 'housing cost burden'. This surveys the percentage of income spent on resdiential rents.

Percentages first

My expectation of 30-33% has risen.

UK = 39.1%
Switzerland = 31.9%
France = 29.5%
Germany = 24.8%

UK workers who rent their accommodation spend 23 minutes every hour working to pay for it
The UK has the highest percentage take out of income in residential renting than any other single European country
The only European country that comes close to the same figure is Spain (39%)
The UK and Spain are two outliers, but then the Spanish did follow the UK model, and probably has other ownership dynamics at play too

The figures for average rental price is similarly grizzly

UK = €902
Switzerland = €822
Germany = €600
France = €598

The cheapest country in the survey was Slovakia at €239 and 13.2% of income

By this token we would expect our hosuing stock to be the best in Europe if we're asking for prices some 33% higher than Germanys? I haven't found a quality indicator yet (I'm inclined not to bother). I think most of us would accept that the standard of housing in Germany and Switzerland is high. I've always formed the impression it's higher than ours and yet we charge 33% more and eat into our disposable by 15% more, for an inferior standard of housing with worse terms and conditions

So to complete Clive's picture. Yes the percentage of people renting accommodation in Germany might be higher, but lets fill in the spaces. Do we think this might have something to do with the fact that they pay €300 a month less for it, and that they allowed to keep 15% more of their income? Also lets not lose sight of the fact that they get a better product too.

Now it begs supplementary questions

Who is paying for this rental burden? In the first case it's the tenants, but utlimately it goes upstream. It has to come from waged income, or benefits topped up by in work incentives like tax credits. This means the burden is shared by a combination of employers and the state.

If the burden falls on employers it becomes an operational overhead that they need to cover in the pricing structure of their goods or services. If you keep pushing that up, you risk losing competitiveness unless it comes with correpsonding productivity gains. If we could take some of this pressure out of the system by deflating the housing wage demand burden, we start to improve competitiveness. It ain't rocket sciene. The lower paid can accept a different wage structure if their own domestic overheads are lowered.

Alternatively government could tax more (there's always a chance we could get something back then). Most people would have little problem paying €100 more tax if it came with a correspionding €300 fall in their rent and a net gain of €200. Instead we've gonme the other way. It's perverse. I say it's perverse because it's not as if the provision is beyond the supply of other providers. Indeed, the state could act as builder, job creator, and landlord, instead of paying upstream subsidies to some other entity to suck money out of the economy and drive down our own productivity and competitiveness

This is broken, and it needs urgent attention

Your argument is in tatters Clive and you should have the decency to withdraw it and look for other solutions
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You talk total crap

i have not made an argument other than to build more houses

all I have pointed out is that your correlation is absurd . And proved it

the above is bonkers. You are not goung to overnight bring down rents right across the country by intensive house building. For a start, where I live there is virtually no scope at all . It would be impossible. Even if it did work it would take years to kick in, if at all. And people are really going to accept lower wages or more tax on the basis of a market drop that may or may not happen?

i don't think so

it is so laughably tenuous that it isn't worth considering

perhaps we should all accept a cut in wages because petrol has gone down too? We can hire 20000 civil servants to enforce that one

So we have to pay extra tax , £100 per month, even if not a renter who may or may not benefit , to pay for something the private sector will do quite willingly for nothing.

Im going to pay £100 a month for the government to build more homes?

No

of course if you knew anything about finance you would know full well that the government could borrow at a very cheap rate by issuing bonds to house build . But the state will fck it up as they always do. Instruct balfours or Barretts and leave them to it

and the idea that housing stock is wonderful in Germany and Switzerland is pure guesswork. Ugly grey apartment blocks are de rigeur
 
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Clive

can i ask one question of you.

you say we as a country are well off and that overall people are better off now than in the past. Can you explain why with all our apparent wealth we need the state to supply 25 billion per annum in housing benefit + 30 billion for tax credits. Surely a government would only be paying that much in a counrty where people are struggling to make ends meet without a lot of help from the state.
 
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Because the vast majority do not receive either.

ok scrap both then. Ok with me and that will prove we are wealthier then?

Personally i I would simply raise pta. We start tax too low in this country. As benny said wtc is an over complicated and slightly ludicrous method of boosting incomes
 
I'm not going into the comparison with wealth in the sixties yet again because it was done to death last time around. There is not an economist anywhere who would argue that we are less wealthy now than then in real terms. That's simply a fact
 

  • m not so sure that Osborne and the Tories haven't be saved by the House of Lords in honesty. In 3 months (yet alone 3 years) the majority of the population will have forgotten this.​






I'm not sure about them forgetting though Warb....i'm sure Clegg hoped the students would forget his issue..this affects a lot more people..and even though the Lords have said alter it..it will still come in and people will know they were misled

if he makes people worse off before they get all these make up amounts..they won't forget.. I actually think the damage has already been done just by Gideon showing intent......Corbyn could get in by default. Labour want to be careful if they leave him as leader..he could get the PM job..won't be so easy to get rid then...not easy to do so now

mind you..i'd like that just to see Clive's reaction:)..his head would explode
 
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Poor stuff ec. Why not look properly

7m claim one or other . 2m can but dont.

yiu can claim child tax with a family income of up to £55k per annum

enough said
 
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EC1 said:

  • m not so sure that Osborne and the Tories haven't be saved by the House of Lords in honesty. In 3 months (yet alone 3 years) the majority of the population will have forgotten this.​






I'm not sure about them forgetting though Warb....i'm sure Clegg hoped the students would forget his issue..this affects a lot more people..and even though the Lords have said alter it..it will still come in and people will know they were misled

if he makes people worse off before they get all these make up amounts..they won't forget.. I actually think the damage has already been done just by Gideon showing intent......Corbyn could get in by default. Labour want to be careful if they leave him as leader..he could get the PM job..won't be so easy to get rid then...not easy to do so now

mind you..i'd like that just to see Clive's reaction:)..his head would explode
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zero chance. I can really see corbyn winning tory seats. Yeah right

there has never been a more unelectable main party. Even under foot
 
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clivex said:
zero chance. I can really see corbyn winning tory seats. Yeah right

there has never been a more unelectable main party. Even under foot
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how many seats would the torys have not won if cameron had been straight about the tax credits?

we could be looking at a no majority game next time
 
clivex said:
and the idea that housing stock is wonderful in Germany and Switzerland is pure guesswork. Ugly grey apartment blocks are de rigeur
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And now you want to put up our collection of terraced houses, Victorian HOMO's, and increasingly, west London garden grabs, against Germany and Switzerland. Well I commend you on your optimism if nothing else

OK aware of how much you hate evidence, and would prefer instead to rely on your opinion, I'll use Eurostat again for consistency

This has been surveyed and summarised under the table of "overburden by tenure status; tenants who rent at market rate". The table is composed of a number of hosuing deprivation indicators and then brought together as followers with the percentages of those who are experiencing unsatisfactory housing standards as follows

UK = 25.2%
Germany = 22.3%
France = 15.8%
Switzerland = 15.2%

The UK tops the comparators using the national benchmarks on; Leaking roofs, damp walls, and window frame rot. (could be Scotland though!)

It matches the French on lack of shower/ bath 0.5% (but that is a national sport in France) Germany and Switzerland has a figure of 0.1%.

Germany tops the table for lack of inside toilet 0.9% (UK is 0.5%)

Overall conclusion; UK private renting tenants at market rate, have the worst housing and pay the most for it (I'm surprised the French did so well myself given their number of tower block estates)

I should say there is a graph for "over crowding" but I can't get the data behind it. All i can report is that the bars on the chart look to be of a very similar height for all four countries
 
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clivex said:
of course if you knew anything about finance you would know full well that the government could borrow at a very cheap rate by issuing bonds to house build . But the state will fck it up as they always do. Instruct balfours or Barretts and leave them to it
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Obviously the muddled stuff you posted above that which I've highlighted doesn't deserve a response, so it's not getting one. This by contrast is more pertinent as it gets closer to where we need to be

In the first case we need to consider that as we stand here today in 2015, we have to build 245,000 new homes every year just to stand still. The simple fact is we've been failing to do so, and have been doing for a decade now. It's difficult to sustain the argument therefore that the private sector led approach is working. It isn't. Although the reasons for our failure are multitudinous developers land banking and controlling the release of supply in order to manipulate yields is one. So too of course is Nimbyism, particularly in conservative run councils where the appetite for new build is lower, and where the community capacity to resist much higher. It was this that largely killed off the expansion towns, and lets not forget that David Cameron played his own personal part in cheering on that on in Oxfordshire

This government (which of course made a great play about failing to hit new build targets in opposition) has also failed, but it needn't be the responsbility of the state alone. Local authorities can form joint venture development companies and borrow using the PWLB which I think is about 0.5% above gilts IIRC. There have been a few examples of where this has happened. I've got it in my head that Bristol issued a Bristol development bond underwritten by this. I also seem to recall that Wakefield and Torbay have built new housing using similarly leveraged development vehicles. There has however been a reluctance for risk averse local authorities to stimulate these kinds of development approaches. My own suspicion is that it owes a lot to operating within the framework of grant regimes, be it from Europe or central government. I also have another theory that the management and councillors who can take these decisions, also possess the biggest incentive not to do so (defence of their own salary and pensions through inertia - or partnership working as its euphamistically called)

The bottom line though is that whilst all this navel gazing has gone on each year, the backlog gets bigger and bigger. Rents keep rising, and they're eating ever further into people's income. If you think people affected by this aren't bothered Clive (the proportion of it being neither here nor there as you suggest) then what can any of us say?

If 40% of your income is disappearing each month into a single hole, people do tend to notice.

So the question remains, how come other countries are building and mainataining better stock, charging £3000 a year less for it, and that it takes out anywhere between 8% and 15% less of someones income? Would the economy not benefit for having this money released as a consumer stimulus? There might even be a moral argument here too. Should government not be trying to legislate for a better quality of life for its citizens?

What i think we're increasingly seeing is that in work benefits are being paid to low income households to supplement a shortfall which employers can no longer pick up without incurring an ever growing wage bill and no tangible productivity gains. Does it not make more sense to try and manage a deflation of it then instead? There will be many more winners all round
 
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Muddled? My posts have been very clear. Couldn't be more straughtforward this is easy stuff

if developers are not developing land for housing then, as I believe has been suggested, they can be penalised for that. Frankly I have my doubts whether that is particularly prevalent

if councils want to raise finance and build then fine. So long as its not out of taxes.

Planning laws as probably need to be loosened

unlike Germany and some other countries we have a rapidly growing population. That's life. The South East is partucarly hit but that's a consequence of a stronglocal economy. You can't buck the market there

you can rent a two bedroom house in burnley for £300 a month
 
EC1 said:
how many seats would the torys have not won if cameron had been straight about the tax credits?

we could be looking at a no majority game next time
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And the Labour Party lost because they were seen as "too left wing" last time . As virtually every survey found

and now?

What you do when you are too left wing for voters is ... Go to extreme left wing of course

of course you do...
 
Warbler said:
Germany tops the table for lack of inside toilet 0.9% (UK is 0.5%)
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Does this mean that in 0.5% (big) of UK rented housing the tenants have to traipse to the privy at the end of the yard every morning with an Edgar Allan brimming with Night Soil?

I thought universal conversion to indoor sanitation was completed - by Law - sometime in the 1960s

Or does this 0.5% represent those whose registered address is a cheap caravan, bus shelter, garage, underneath the arches, or Gentleman Of The Road?
 
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Probably but like most stats, they tell us barely the full story.

uk has a much older housing stock than Germany and yet there is barely any difference between the two countries. Also under this survey, you could have an idlylic thatched cottage with a dodgy window frame which would be deemed a slum against a nightmare apartment on a dodgy bleak East german estate, which wouldnt

you simply don't see the same quantity of 19th century housing in those countries

but as with anything, it's not what you keep in, it's what you leave out. This is of no interest

ultimately the only answer is to increase housing stock, preferably with minimal government interference and most certainly without taxing the electorate to do so. The idea that mortgage holders should pay £100 a month in tax to have a vast cheap rent housing estate in their backyard and the consequence of forcing down the value of their property is.........

I think it's pretty certain that you could never increases the stock quickly enough to force a fall in rents and it would be absolutely impossible to do so across all regions
 
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Getting back to tax. Child allowance ans tax credits should be scrapped. There is no justifiable reason why a single tax payer on 20k should subside a couple on 55k a year to have kids

Its a disgrace

Raise personal allowances and that rewards the low paid and ia far far simpler to administer. Also the welcome knock on effect of being able to fire thousands of civil servants
 
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