to think mansion tax is an unfair tax on London and the South East?

[goodnessgracious]

I disagree with mansion tax but regardless it seems to me to be unfair on Londoners.

Aibu to think that it may also force some people to sell their properties who are income poor but property rich?

It sounds like it won't happen now. Too many labour MPs have come out against it but we shall see.

I don't think it will happen.
If it does it will politicise rich people in the way that the poll tax politicised poor people.

Greengrow - yes, bailing out the banks was the opposite of free market BUT the financial crash that made it necessary was the result of ineffective regulation of financial markets, not markets that weren't free enough! You can't have it both ways I'm afraid!

We will have to agree to differ on that. You could just as easily blame home owners in the US for taking on loans they knew they could not afford. Why blame those providing the money rather than the silly people who over borrowed? Just because people like to tick the rich rather than dare to say the sub primer borrowers caused the crash.

written - there are plenty of non-doms who use our roads, A&Es, police service (to protect their property) etc. This idea that you can live somewhere for any length of time, or own property somewhere, and yet use zero state-provided services is a fallacy, I'm afraid.

if you are truly a resident elsewhere, you use those services much less than someone living here, and you have of course paid tax on the purchase of the house.

Also, non-doms may game the system, but that argues for closing loopholes.

I think the interest only element of mortgage lending meant that most people knew they could afford it.

The only thing they didn't really consider was that property prices could crash and that's something you can only grasp if you have a good understanding of politics, history of finance etc. The banks have that, your average punter doesn't. Really they should only have been lending on this basis, asking people what would they do if house prices went down.

The difference between here and the US is that property prices crashed over there. That hasn't happened here because the government keeps propping up the housing market with things like housing benefit and help to buy. In that respect less government intervention meant the bubble burst quicker. I'm not sure what the US did about bank bailouts though, I believe they did less bailing out than we did.

But the house price crash in sub prime was the effect not the cause.
The cause was people taking on a mortgage they couldn't repay. If someone can service their debt it doesn't mean they lose their home because it has gone down in price.
Interest rates and ability to service debt are the only variables

jubileedebt.org.uk/countries

This is interesting. Private foreign debt in the UK is 364% of GDP. We are the 98th most indebted nation.

Our private foreign debt is higher than Italy's.

Greengrow - yes, bailing out the banks was the opposite of free market BUT the financial crash that made it necessary was the result of ineffective regulation of financial markets, not markets that weren't free enough! You can't have it both ways I'm afraid!

you can look at countries that have a far less free banking sector, for example Canada. They have much stronger regulations on banks there, and there wasn't a single bailout. in fact Canadian banks, despite the general exposure Canada has to the american market, remained profitable throughout the crisis.

Going off topic here but the only bit of UK banks that needed "protecting" (not bailing out) were retail and corporate deposits. The Govt could have provided a blanket guarantee whilst letting the banks themselves go bust, through administration and out the otherside.

In fact, we missed a huge opportunity to "upgrade" our archaic banking system to one that works with modern technology with low costs focussed on people not transactions.

Sorry for derail post ...