Wondrous, just wondrous
Ritchie welcomes Labour’s plan to build many more houses:
If the price is kept sustainable by ensuring land prices do not surge to match the demand for housing – which can of course be fixed by planning legislation – then I will welcome it even more.
But if you fix planning legislation so that land with planning permission is cheap then why the hell do you need the government to go build the houses? You’ve already provided the incentive for private builders to go gangbusters, haven’t you?
It’s entirely typical of the Murph. He builds some grandiose system which requires lots of government intervention and taxing and spending and jobs for the boys like The Murph. But hidden in there is an assumption necessary to make the plan work. An assumption which then also means that the rest of the plan isn’t necessary.
It’s there in his pensions “work” with Colin Hines for example. Pensions should be invested in real assets like green schemes and the like and there’s to be a vast overarching system to make them do so. These green schemes will pay interest on lovely safe bonds to the pension funds.
But if you can work out a way to make green schemes pay interest on lovely safe bonds then you don’t need all the rest of the regulation of pension schemes. Because the pension funds would be just overjoyed to invest in lovely safe bonds.
As above, if land with planning permission is cheap as a result of changes in planning legislation then you don’t need to do anything more. Except, perhaps, get out of the way to avoid being trampled by vast armies of profit seeking builders.