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Saturday, 23 February 2013

Info Post
*rant*

It strikes me that this is one of the most abused phrase in the whole debate about taxation and housing.

The dawn of social housing a century ago was based on the simple observation that the working man (or woman) was paying £1 rent, but that it only cost the landlord a few shillings to provide, the rest was pure profit/land rent. So the governments of the day decided that it would be better for social cohesion and so on (i.e. they didn't want a revolution) if they built social housing which you could rent for five shillings, this still made a modest profit for the government and the uncollected land rent stayed in the pockets of the working man for him to spent as he pleased.

So the whole rationale for social housing was not so much "ability to pay" but "leave the working man's earnings in his own pocket, don't let the landlords snaffle it". It's hard to disagree with that.

Fast forward a century to Home-Owner-Ism, there is a complete schism:

1) On the one hand, social housing is seen as incontrovertibly bad, something to be sold off or given away as fast as possible to whoever happens to be in it. Renting out social housing at "below market rents" (even though overall rents cover the cost of providing it, and the cost to the taxpayer is precisely fuck all divided by six) is evil, but selling it off for "below market value" is seen as a the ultimate act of benevolent liberation by any government.

2) On the other hand, when it comes to taxes on housing, such as Council Tax, or Heaven forfend, Mansion Tax or even Land Value Tax, the Homeys are up in arms. "But it doesn't relate to ability to pay!" they screech.

Well, here's a hot tip, if you can't afford the Council Tax, Mansion Tax or Land Value Tax, then get yourself on the waiting list for a council house.

Oh... the waiting lists are too long, it'll be years before you're allocated a home. Well what a surprise, it's because you Homeys have made sure that no social housing has been built for forty years and all the nicest stuff has been given away.

Grave, dug, lie in it.

*/rant*

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