That's the sort of information that would be more useful Clive (#663), as it would allow you to take the bottom decile on a housing indicator, and then over lay it against the corresponding decile for income, so as to ensure you're comparing like with like all the way up the food chain. Overlaying a bedsit rent on a minimum wage etc and working up from there. This information has proven much harder to find than I thought it would in truth. It used to be easily accessible, and OCSI still have it, but you have to pay now
The general picture I'm seeing however is private rents accounting for anywhere between 35% and 50% of personal income in this sector of society, in this geographic location. This is an horrendous drain, and real disincentive. You work hard to hand over your money over to a landlord. Equally you can find youself coming out with so little that it starts to propogate what I'll call a bad work attitude. Ultimately this starts to damage a product or service, and with it competitiveness. Especially if it starts to show up in wage demands without a productivity gain.
We've certainly seen governments increasing the number of in work benefits for the low paid, and also raising the tax thresholds to help them. This is I believe, a direct response to the pressures they're under in their private housing arrangements. Take a step back and see it for what it is. It's the government, subsidising employers who would otherwise been under pressure to pay it, so that a private landlord benefits. You'd have to be radio rental to think this is both a sustainable and desirable model for society to continue running with.
The state shouldn't be subsidising employers in this area, and neither should we expect employers to be subsidising landlords. We need to introduce new supply into the market to reduce the inflationary pressures, and amount landlords can charge. Where are we going otherwise
Personally, I'd rather hand it over to a government, at least there's half a chance we'd get something back for it as a society. Who knows, they might even buy us an army to fight the next world with, or roads, or schools, or a health service. What will the private sector landlord do though? Buy more property, or spend it on foreign manufactured goods or holidays. It's a drain in our economy
The thing about the way this has evolved though is that it's discriminating. The boomers and generation X are going to feed of the millenials and then expect them to pay for their care in old age too, as the next cohort after generation X in particular (I don't think they have a name) haven't made pension provision
We've got a serious problem emerging here, and if you trace it back upstream, a lot of it empties out on property
