Latest Peice Of "genius" From Some "think" Tank!

[ToraToraTora]

So us older folk who have worked and saved all our lives must bale out the kids because the little darlings are finding it too difficult? Life is difficult life is unfair, get on with it.

[bhg481]

Perhaps it's time we older people started complaining about all the cheap things that the current youngsters can afford that we were unable to in the 60s. A small B&W TV cost several weeks wages, we could afford very few outfits of clothes (Sunday best and one, perhaps two, more), one or two pairs of shoes; few people could afford a car or the petrol to put in it (petrol about £1 for 3 gallons, so my first month's pay of £30 would buy me 90 gallons; petrol now just over £1 per gallon, so my OLD AGE PENSION will buy me over 400 gallons per month). Oil change every 3 months or 3000 miles then; every year or 20,000 miles now and the cars now get about twice as many mpg as they did then. Foreign holidays? Don't make me laugh. I remember learning French at school and thinking "What is the point of this, I'll never go to France". Now I spend several weeks a year over there.
How amazing that we managed to save up to buy a house.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Spathiphyllum's original contention was that:

"the housing [price] inflation has sky rocket above and beyond any wage inflation".

He's obviously right and I don't know why anyone would contest this.

The point about the "genius" thinking of the OP is that no amount of tinkering with stamp duty, first-time buyer preferential mortgages and the like will have any effect other than to raise house prices further as previous posters have pointed out.

Maybe we should consider the causes of house price inflation and address them. The most obvious one is demand outstrips supply, so build more houses.

Another possible cause I've seen punted is that the extra liquidity created by "quantitive easing", which "ought" to have led to high monetary[i inflation, actually ended up inflating assets classes like property and equities. How, or why, and what if anything can be done about [i]that] I'm not competent to comment on.

[bhg481]

spath - I'm pointing out lots of things which are far cheaper to buy now than they were 60 years ago; you're pointing out one which is dearer now than then.

[sunny-dave]

"He's obviously right and I don't know why anyone would contest this"

Maybe because (with the exception of parts of London and a few other hot-spots) it is absolute rubbish - repeating a falsehood a thousand times doesn't make it any less false.

The ratio of house prices to after-tax income is not so very different now to most of the 1970s, when my generation lived in squalor and poverty and struggled to save a deposit.

[sunny-dave]

Terrace house in my small town now £125,000 - starting salary for a teacher £25,000 - multiplier about 5x

1976 - same house about £11,000 - starting salary for a teacher about £2,300 - multiplier about 4.8x - but income tax was 35% - and (if you could get a mortgage) mortgage around 4x higher than today.

So not all that different ...

[hereIam]

OMG here we go again young -v- old!!! I am so very, very sorry that as a pensioner I worked hard all my life, paid my way, bought my own modest little house and managed to save a bit - what a monster am I !! When I was working full time for 43 years and paying my way through life, I never gave a thought to future youngsters (particularly when one myself) and how they would fare, was I supposed to then ?? Great best answer ...

[MargoTester]

Spath - 16.17 "I simply don't have time to gather information from the internet"
Is that because you spend all day on here, or because you work.

[sunny-dave]

I give up - if you can't understand (in my example) that it takes the same time to save a deposit of £10,000 now as it would £1,000 in 1976 then I just despair.

[cassa333]

Sorry TTT I haven't read the other posts as it is too long and I've just got in from work.

What a load of twaddle. Older people have tended to pay their dues over their lifetime so why should they now pay extra for young people who haven't?

If there were less unemployed (I know unemployment is at a low at the moment but even so), shirkers, wasters and grabbers then we wouldn't be looking to tax those who have already paid a lifetime of tax.

Get everyone paying tax regardless of where the money comes from. If you get benefits, it's taxed same as everyone else's income.

[Jackdaw33]

I don't know where this is heading. If it cost 5 x your salary to buy a house in 1978 and costs 5 x now, what's the problem?