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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 1m

If you never remove people from social housing then you will never have enough social housing available for those who genuinely need it. That’s the bottom line really.

ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 5m

You can pass it on to a family member who resides with you for 12 months in eg Westminster. I know of people who got their parents social home this way and then post succession the parents bought a home elsewhere and moved out.

www.westminster.gov.uk/housing/tena...

Succession to a tenancy | Westminster City Council

Succession is a legal term used when a person takes over a tenancy when the tenant dies and relates to the statutory right of certain people to succeed to a tenancy following the death of a tenant. We...

www.westminster.gov.uk

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 7m

Eh, in Vienna almost all social housing is within a few % of market rents. It just provides better security around things like evictions. Which they can do because Vienna builds a lot. It builds as much or more than London for 1/5th the size.

ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 12m

Because people’s income goes up and down through their life. If you want social housing available to the newly in need then you need to be getting rid of those who are no longer need or at least charging them markers rent. Quite a lot of well of people in social housing now.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 18m

And, London has an insanely large amount of social housing already. It’s a huge fraction of the stock already.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 19m

Right but London is very profitable to build in unless you handicap the builders with s106 requirements to reduce profitability. And then whenever the system gets a shock to profitability none of them are viable and all need to be replanned.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 20m

(And then to reform the system of social rents to generate more churn. At the very least when social tenants get decent incomes their rents should be allowed to rapidly converge to market rents)

ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 22m

Yes because that’s what happens when you build so little market rate housing. The need is for market rate housing to lower average rents so fewer people need social rents.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 25m

In London that isn’t the biggest need. 1/3 of central London is already affordable housing. The biggest need is for people who don’t qualify for affordable housing. (Also the UK’s insane system where a social house is not only for life but passed down to your kids!)

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 23h

It’s very funny that this government has now been in power for 18 months and yet every bit of legislation seems to be a last minute job. They had 18 months to get it ready what have they been doing?!?

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 1d

Right but also what’s the point of an electric car before you have a fully developed electric grid with industrial scale efficient power generation. Surely at 1900 relative prices for oil and electricity it would have seemed totally implausible it could ever work economically right?

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 1d

Before that he would probably expropriate cash rich corporates which again is a reason why it’s very hard for a powerful sovereign to go bankrupt without taking down its corporate sector.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 1d

I’m not saying it can’t happen I’m just saying if it does happen it will suck approximately the entire US corporate sector down with it so there is genuinely no way us corporate debt can be safer than treasuries.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 1d

Would those cash equivalents happen to be the T-bills you just wrote down to 0 in this scenario? <laser eyes>

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 1d

But us corporates trading through the US is legitimately demented.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 1d

Even French corporates can trade through French sovereign because a single eurozone country debt problem isn’t going to necessarily cascade into systemic risk to thinks like repo funding across the whole euro area.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 1d

It’s one thing for a corporate EM with a clean balance sheet and available hard currency funding sources to trade through a weak sovereign but any world in which the US really fails on its debt obligations will be a vortex of USD funding obligation unwinds that will make the GFC look tame.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 1d

So America does have a circle of kids who know for sure they will be rich all their life in a way the Uk mostly doesn’t. And what little does exist in the UK seems incredibly concentrated around Eton AIUI.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 1d

I think fwiw high society does now kind of exist again in America where for tax reasons lots of people from genuinely wealthy estates put money into trusts for their kids that will pay out continuously from 21 or so.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 1d

In ye olde times there was a genuinely small circle of aristocratic wealth and it had mostly been around for decades. But now most wealth is earned later in life and comparatively little is inherited so it doesn’t lend itself to the old kind of long lasting social structures.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 1d

It’s bigger than you think? Edinburghs upper tier private schools graduate about 1000 kids a year between them. This becomes very sensitive to what you mean by upper class too as most of those kids are the children of doctors, lawyers and financial professional types.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 1d

‘High society’ in the sense that you mean doesn’t really exist anymore is the answer I think. There is no secret circle of super upper class people who all share a social calendar in the way you would see in eg: The Gilded Age.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 2d

Well not always, but sometimes you can. Several examples I can think of where councils that lobbied against a sewage treatment plan or a reservoir or a solar farm only to later turn around and say there was no sewage/water/electricity for new houses.

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 2d

Sure, it can happen, although making sure there is sufficient utility capacity is one of the things a planning system is supposed to achieve! (Yes the Uk doesn’t actually have a planning system per se just a weird situation all round!)

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ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 2d

Sure but that’s hard to achieve in free markets. Any attempt to protect margins invites competition and home building is not exactly a high moat business.

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