A newspaper with an agenda?
Shit! 
_**“If you decrease the amount of money people are bringing in from rent, and the amount of money that property is worth, then you are decrease spending in the economy and you’ll cause a recession. And you know who suffers the most in a recession? Yep, the poor.”
“What you don’t seem to get is that if the rich miss out, then that is passed down to the poor at an amplified rate.”**_
This argument; that doing anything that negatively affects the incomes of the rich (often cynically synonymised with the phrase ‘harming the economy’) would necessarily and unavoidably make things worse for the poor, is what needs substantiating. The closest that you’ve come to actually doing so is arguing that if landlords earn less through their rent, then they’ll be spending less in the economy and that’ll end up causing less money to be spent on things like restaurant meals/painters & decorators/art & music/general luxuries which working-class/poor people provide.
Now that may very well be true, but your argument is very much predicated on a theory of trickle-down economics in its most traditional sense.
As I say, that may be a position you’re happy to defend, but defend it you shall have to if you want to back up your arugments about the fundamental flaws of rent controls.
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Gotta love JC
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Well, it all depends how you were taught economics doesn’t it…but what we’re talking about is not a case of trickle down economics, it’s about legislation causing a property crash that will affect anyone who owns property, not just the rich, but every home owner in the country. If they all stop spending in the economy because their nest egg has gone rotten, it will cause severe issues.
As I said above, rental controls could be put in now to control the rise of rent, but you can’t bring the price of rents down significantly without seeing a property and then economic crash.
Rent controls are just but one factor, Cherts.
Don’t forget right to buy being extended to private tenants.
The worst case scenario for landlords is both rent controls and right to buy being extended to private accommodation. Not only could rents go down in the short term, but if the public scheme is anything to go by, tenants might even get a discount when the exercise that right of purchase.
Billy is not happy about the quotes…
Originally posted by Billy Bragg on Facebook
Been a really frustrating day today. Woke up to find that the Times was claiming that I had turned against Jeremy Corbyn, referring to me in a headline as “previously loyal supporter Billy Bragg”. I can’t link to the story as it is behind the Times paywall, but the gist of it was based on the following quote, taken from an answer I gave to a question put to me at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Sunday night:
“I worry that Jeremy is a kind of 20th century Labour man. We need to be reaching out to people. We need to be working with everybody we can because you see what happens when a political party becomes tribalist. We can’t afford to go down that route if we are to retain the ability to represent ordinary working people”.
I said that, but in the hands of the Times journalist it became the following headline: “Jeremy Corbyn is a 20th century man unable to reach the electorate”. What is missing here is the context in which I was speaking. In Scotland, tribalism has lead to an extinction level event for the Labour Party. I believe that the way forward involves both the foundation of a federal UK with devolution for England and voting reform at Westminster. The latter will necessitate forming a progressive alliance with other party and I have yet to hear Corbyn or Smith express any support for this idea. Are the Labour willing to give away power via devolution and share power with progressive allies or will they cling to the centralising tendencies exemplified by New Labour in the 20th century?
Frustratingly, none of this context appeared in the Times piece so, as you can imagine, my Twitter feed was a firestorm of angry Corbynites and smug Smith supporters. I had to work very hard to refute their accusations. For the record , I never gave the Times an interview - they were reporting comments I made at a public event. More importantly, I remain a loyal supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. I feel that the quote has been twisted out of context in order to sow discord among Corbyn supporters by a media that castigates us as being mindless followers of a leader cult, yet condemns as disloyalty any hint that we may want there to be a debate about the way forward.
Our old mate Furbs was all over this on TSW, praising Bragg.
GB corrected him, and there he was, snapped back into default mode of labelling everyone haters of a particular religion.
Don’t think he’ll be listening to New England anytime soon.
That won’t stop verbal bleating on over on the darkside and inferring that I want to rape all jews (or something).
He really is an odd cunt
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Re. the bolded; I see your argument and can certainly imagine why the value of a propery would drop if it’s rental potential were reduced. I’m just not sure that it wouldn’t be a painful, but ultimately desirable outcome overall.
Many thousands of people in London and the South East are priced out of ever owning a home at the moment. Besides, should a home even be a ‘nest egg’? Is a home really a nest egg if it’s your only property and it’s the one you intend on living in for the rest of your life?
Look at the people up in the North who’s houses have remained in the £80k-125k range because there’s no real rental market in York or Carlisle, and have then had them flooded because of government cuts to flood defences. Their houses aren’t ‘nest eggs’; people are just completely immobilised because the value of property in the South dwarfs their own. They end up trapped.
I spent most of my teenage and early twenties as a very free-market libertarian and I completely understand that obviously areas that are more in-demand will entail higher prices, but the exponential nature of house prices going up and up really does massively entrench unearned inequality.
And I say that as a Londoner who’s parents house has no less than quintupled in value since it was bought (nice and cheaply in a once very shit and now very nice area of South London) twenty years ago and stands to benefit from that unearned inequality.
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It’s not a case of whether or not it should be, it’s the fact that it currently is and if that changes you’re taking a lot of money out of the economy. Now, slowing things up going forward, that’s fair enough and I wholeheartedly support that.
One of the main issues with bringing down rental values is that you will have people who have purchased on buy to let with potentially negative investments (mortgage now more than rent), with a property they cannot sell due to the drop of value. You would see many, many mortgage defaults, and you remember what happened last time we were in that situation.
Don’t forget we will see a drop in house prices over the next few years anyway (especially in London) due to Brexit.
Rape Jews? And I thought all you wanted to do was finger his wife.
Either way, I love Bill.
Owen Smith used that line too.
Is Owen Smith any relation to the old Labour Leader John Smith?
Don’t think so. John Smith was Scottish. Owen’s da is Dai Smith, Welsh. Smith is apparently a common name.
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Originally posted by @Chertsey-Saint
It’s not a case of whether or not it should be, it’s the fact that it currently is and if that changes you’re taking a lot of money out of the economy. Now, slowing things up going forward, that’s fair enough and I wholeheartedly support that.
One of the main issues with bringing down rental values is that you will have people who have purchased on buy to let with potentially negative investments (mortgage now more than rent), with a property they cannot sell due to the drop of value. You would see many, many mortgage defaults, and you remember what happened last time we were in that situation.
Don’t forget we will see a drop in house prices over the next few years anyway (especially in London) due to Brexit.
But, but, the people who are paying the inflated rents to sustain the parasite’s lifestyle will have more money in their pockets thus more money to put back into the general economy, money that won’t just sit in the parasite’s bank account, money which helps fund the bankers’ (that we all hate) lifestyles!
For example, drop rent by £100 a month for 10 families whose homes are all owned by 1 parasite
They will surely spend that £100 over the month and it will go into the general economy.
The parasite is £1,000 worse off (my heart bleeds it really does) but would they have been spending that £1,000 each month? Probably maybe half of it
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Originally posted by @BTripz
Originally posted by @Chertsey-Saint
It’s not a case of whether or not it should be, it’s the fact that it currently is and if that changes you’re taking a lot of money out of the economy. Now, slowing things up going forward, that’s fair enough and I wholeheartedly support that.
One of the main issues with bringing down rental values is that you will have people who have purchased on buy to let with potentially negative investments (mortgage now more than rent), with a property they cannot sell due to the drop of value. You would see many, many mortgage defaults, and you remember what happened last time we were in that situation.
Don’t forget we will see a drop in house prices over the next few years anyway (especially in London) due to Brexit.
But, but, the people who are paying the inflated rents to sustain the parasite’s lifestyle will have more money in their pockets thus more money to put back into the general economy, money that won’t just sit in the parasite’s bank account, money which helps fund the bankers (that we all hate) lifestyles!
For example, drop rent by £100 a month for 10 families whose homes are all owner by 1 parasite
They will surely spend that £100 over the month and it will go into the general economy.
The parasite is £1,000 worse off (my heart bleeds it really does) but would they have been spending that £1,000 each month? Probably maybe half of it
For a start, parasite is very harsh. I’m sure some are utter cunts, but certainly not all.
Secondly, if it was £100 a month then it doesn’t matter, I agree, but what we’re talking about is far more draconian cuts. Of course, this is ignoring the people that use this as a pension, rather than a business.
A property crash based on rental controls is not in the interests of anyone, even those that don’t currently own. A reduction in house prices needs to be dealt with through supply and demand.
The supply and demand route has been tried before has it not? And what happens is more houses are built so more buy-to-lets happen. And what happens when you run ourt of space to build more houses?
Is the 10% social housing rule still in force BTW?
Surely if you bring in rent control, B2L becomes less attractive and the houses will come on to the open market and be more accessible to people who want to buy but can’t at the moment!
And maybe if people are using houses as pensions then why can’t they invest the money somewhere else where it will do some good to the general economy not just themselves!!
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