FionaK |
|
| @ les wilson
I do not think that rising house prices are a good thing, no matter what the tories of all colours tell you. Nor is a rise inevitable with increased demand, because it is perfectly possible to regulate credit so that the lending bears some relation to actual wages. In the past there was a cap on what you could borrow and that seems to me to have been good for the people, because it did not condemn them to coping with unmanageable debt. The price of houses is not related to their costs of production: it is the quintessential example of an asset which costs what the market will bear. All the neoliberal cant about high and rising house prices being an indicatiion of strong economy is just so much self serving bluster from the rentiers who control our news agenda and our lives
They benefit directly since they do not have to live in the house they own as an "asset". Politicians benefit directly through their expenses and through "flipping"
They benefit indirectly because it ostensibly aligns ordinary workers interests with those of the rentier class: if there is no security through the welfare state then acquisition of a capital asset makes some apparent sense: and naturally in this climate that is what people see. So we are "all on the same side", blah blah. But it is perfectly obvious that this "safe" asset is not intrinsically safe at all. Many people have suffered from "negative equity" and they consider that this is all wrong: it isn't. What is wrong is their analysis of the nature of the problem
Bear in mind that inflation is the big monster we must all fight at the cost of high unemployment and austerity and all the rest. Rising house prices are also inflation: oh, but that is different! Well it isn't. It is exactly the same
In Scotland we had a long tradition of social housing: not all of it was good but at its best it built very diverse communities and it was very successful. It benefited a whole range of people and we did not have the attitude to it which is prevalent in england -don't know about Wales and NI - which appears to consider there is a stigma to living in council housing, and which is a justified view given they confine social housing to the very poorest in ghettos. That is an example of the outcomes of the "targetting" so beloved of the Polly Toynbees of his world.
I do not buy the mainstream story about house prices in any way or shape or form. My interest is not served by that narrative and we are not all in it together. That many were convinced by that monumental lie is one of the most dispiriting features of the neoliberal hegemony
|
| | |
