Today Spud claims that scarcity is caused by markets and economic scarcity does not, in fact, exist.
As part of his proof:
….we need to ask it within a specific context, and that, of course, is that we have to do this within the planetary constraints, which we now know exist.
Therefore we have scarcity.
Sigh.
This is very funny though.
For example, there is enough land for everyone in the UK to have somewhere decent to live, and if we chose to make them available, there would be enough builders in this country for that to happen. We might need to allow some in as migrants for a while, but when we tried to build half a million houses a year in the UK, we had the builders available, and we could, again.
What is more, the materials to allow houses to be built could be found. They may not exist at this moment, but if we really tried to make sure that everybody had a decent house in this country, the materials would be available, and innovation would make them sustainable.
But the fact is that, although I’ve just said, land is abundant, builders are available, and materials exist, we are not building anything like the right number of houses, because those who control the land are restricting our access to it. It’s not available to keep land prices high.
And funding is not available because people are being priced out of housing by excessive interest rates and excessive demands for what are effectively rents on the existing supply of land by those who own it.
As a consequence, people are homeless, not because we couldn’t house them, but because we’ve decided to prioritise house prices over the need for housing.
Government has controlled the price and availability of building land for the past 80 years. That’s why we’ve a shortage of course. If we actually had a free market – as we did in the 1930s – then we’d not have the scaricity.
On the one hand Murphy has decided that we are limited by planetary constraints.
On the other hand Murphy is unconcerned by any lack of “materials to allow houses to be built” because “innovation” would enable them to be found.
Those who control the land are limiting our access to it.
Quite true: they are called the District/Borough Council Planning Department.
I am not going to regale you with a description of my District Council’s Planning Department lest it be viewed as an incitement to use hurty words.
Usual crap from him. Everyone can have everything.
So why bother working for it? Don’t go to all that effort building houses for others if you get your land and house given to you for free. Incentives matter.
I thought Spud had discovered opportunity cost the other day? That is, if you use all the land, materials and people for creating housing there’s fuck all left over for anything else such as crops, green shit, goods & services production? And if we don’t do stuff to trade we can’t get this from overseas?
Lordy. The bright 2-year old upstairs already understands scarcity and opportunity cost better than Spud.
Spud mate: play with your trains. Enjoy the rest of your life. Go on, you’ve earned it. Give the rest of us a break. And consider, while you’re at it, that your Hornby Princess Elizabeth on the fast track is not simultaneously working in the sidings, and why.
To quote Thomas Sowell:
The first rule of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of a good to go around at a price people are willing to pay. The first rule of politics is to disregard the first rule of economics.
“… because people are being priced out of housing by excessive interest rates …”
It’s mortgage statement time again is it?
Every month we point out that interest rates have been historically low. And that there’s another big factor pushing up house prices. It’s the elephant in the four bed semi. It starts with ‘I’. and ends with “migration”.
Some homeless people are homeless because they want to be homeless and can’t cope with being housed, and would only live in a house if you locked them in. And even then, they’d sleep on the floor.
1980 presidential debate:
Jimmy Carter: “Only government can manage scarcity fairly.”
Reagan: “Screw that; we’re America. We’ll just make more.”
If they try to build their 1.5 million houses it won’t be land that’s scarce, it will be tradesmen and stuff. Pipes, wood, heat pumps, insulation. Especially those things which are required by building regs. Everything about building has been controlled, mostly needlessly. Their own regs will doom their project.
Oh, and the other things the construction trades have to do like the infrastructure projects and the endless green crap. And refurbishing hotels after enrichment has finished with them.
“ there is enough land for everyone in the UK to have somewhere decent to live”
… and wait for the screams when anyone tries to build on it!
We obviously need to import millions of migrant workers to build houses, to house the millions of migrant workers and their offspring. Of course there’s plenty of land! Look at all that farmland going to waste that we could build half a million houses per year on. Food? We can just print even more money from the magic money tree and import the lot, it’s not a problem. A double bonus is that it will get rid of much of the countryside, which we all know is racist and all the farmers, who as we jolly well know need to be taxed into extinction. The more that commit suicide, the better!
Spud
Professor emeritus in bean counting
Oh, there no more beans to count
Bugger
Ely.
There are three factors making housing limited:
– interest rates are low. Rather like with student loans, when the buyers get free money the seller raises the price. Because there will be buyers willing to pay that higher price because they have the money.
– the price on land in cities is mostly in the planning permissions. Just see what the price on a green space you can’t build anything on will be. Who would buy it? Only the local government.
– location location location. This covers all sorts of things, from “good schools” (i.e. your kids are unlikely to be molested or attacked), to “Can I go to more than one face-to-face meeting a day from here?” There’s limited amounts of that space due to living in a (mostly) two-dimensional world.
If we actually had a free market [in land] – as we did in the 1930s – then we’d not have the scaricity.
UK population: 1930, 46m; 2025, 70m…
@ rhoda klapp
The Super in “Supermac” started with his getting 300k houses built per year when Attlee’s government hadn’t managed to meet its 200k target, not even by tossing up a lot of prefabs (a few of which were decent and were still there last time I looked but most of which had to be pulled down and replaced with proper houses after a decade – or, sometimes, two).
So we had enough tradespeople in the 1950s to build 1.5m houses in five years.
In areas where the Planning Authority is also the Housing Authority it can go and purchase a good-sized area of land that is fairly flat but not in a flood plain and then give itself planning consent to build a housing estate. I can remember my (then) home town doing just that when I was about twelve; when the first tenants moved in the Town Council added a bus service and a shopping centre with the Co-Op as the only supermarket. It is not beyond the wit of man to repeat trick (?but can Ms Rayner). Of course many (?most) of Wilson’s tower blocks, like Attlee’s prefabs, had to be demolished after less than half-a-century, so I don’t hold out much hope for the quality of the proposed 1.5m houses.