To wonder if tory voters care about the 1 million.

[Jacobsmum1972]

I bet they don't give a flying monkeys for anyone coming under attack by the Tories. The poor, disabled and tennants.

I have felt close to tears all day because I know what a conservative majority means for so many in this country.

I explained much earlier in the thread the positive impacts of cutting housing benefits alongside a mass building programme

I think the figures given are questionable but it is true that high earners can be no better off than someone on benefits. I remeber a person on another saying they did not qualify for child benefit but had x left over after commuting, child care and housing costs. Entitled 2 indicated that I would get similar as a single parent with 3dc on benefits. Single people are the real losers.

But jobless the children will grow up and tax credits slashed to 3k a year not 12k . The couple will then be left living on 11k a year. And what about their retirement ? No 2M house to sell in London and move to a cheaper area with a large lump sum. No decent pension pot built up over the years from earning 60k.

And also no prospect of selling their home to pay care home fees and so on.

I wish my mortgage payment was flexible, sadly I have to use it to pay my mortgage...

"Jobless - how would cutting Housing benefit help?"

Well, fundamentally the HB goes to landlords. As I said the utility for someone earning £6.50/hour of a house in London is much the same as a house in Sheffield.

In several areas of London, 40% of households receive housing benefit. That's the majority of all rented housing.

Slashing the billions of pounds of public cash injected into the market should bring down rents for all.

"But jobless the children will grow up and tax credits slashed to 3k a year not 12k . The couple will then be left living on 11k a year. And what about their retirement ? No 2M house to sell in London and move to a cheaper area with a large lump sum. No decent pension pot built up over the years from earning 60k."

Well exactly. That's why tax credits are destructive - they incentivise short-term thinking. Most people don't think about the future as much as now.

Labour extended tax credits because it wanted most people to be benefits claimants so you were all bound to and in a sense owned by the state. It did not set you free. It made you slaves of the state and its "beneficence". If we can remove that link between so many in work also obtaining a benefit that would be a good start.

However by far the biggest issue is UK has very low productivity - it's the biggest thing holding us back, very short hours, getting shorter, people working just a few hours. It is the main thing holding back our development as a nation and until we manage to sort that out we will find it very hard even to reduce our spending to nearer what we bring in never mind start to pay back the nation's massive national debt.

I find it astounding people don't see the irony of putting 'pay higher wages', 'tax companies more' and 'build more affordable housing' in the same sentence.

Who do you think builds houses? Labour's social justice fairies? We can't afford a social housing programme. Particularly not one where the people building them are paid high wages. So we want companies to build them. But we want them to pay really high wages, lots of tax and still make the housing affordable so little or no profit. It just won't happen.

Platitudes are very nice but they don't work.

"We can't afford a social housing programme"

Actually, properly managed a social housing program would be an investment.

Don't forget, the government does not give the properties to people it rents them, and it owns considerable assets and makes/saves money through rent and not paying out massive housing benefits to private landlords

The current housing benefit bill is £24.6-billion.

Something should be done about that, and capping / simply taking HB away from people, making many of them homeless seems like a cruel and desperately ill-thought out idea.

This sounds sensible to me. ...

1. Build new social housing on a large scale
2. Rent it to people in need. Save on the current massive housing bill because housing benefit is coming back into the public purse, not getting syphoned off by private landlords
3. Encourage people to stay on when they are no longer in need and pay for their rent out of their wages. This will generate income.
4. Let people buy if they wish.
5. Re-invest the money in new social housing projects.
6. Once those in dire need are housed, open it up to anyone who would like a council house (As was originally intended.) Use the rent paid in to

invest in the system.

An indirect effect of this system would be that the housing market would stop rising exponentially, meaning our children might just have a chance of buying or renting a place where they grew up.

Society will also benefit for having strong communities, who can look after each other which saves social services and the NHS money.

The detail may need a little finessing, but what's not to like?

Lotus I am sure many people will be so grateful for the Tory government " setting them free" to live in poverty.

SoonToBeSix

On threads like this, "poverty" is always used a little too freely. Read the other thread in the Politics section of MN - where people who did grow up in what you might believe to be "obscene poverty" back in the 70s voted Tory this time round, partly because Labour ruined a lot of things for them back then, and also because their experience have shaped them to aspire to better things than stay where they were.

Wigglylines "Also the Housing Benefit should not be counted as income if you're comparing with salaries IMO because it is not money which the recipient is free to use as they wish - it goes directly into the pockets of a Landlord (and is very often not the full amount, so needs to have more money added out of benefits)."

Sorry, just had to take a moment to copy and pasted probably the funniest thing I ever read on here, maybe anywhere.

I'm just astonished.... Housing benefit doesn't count because you don't have the choice.... I'm going to ring the nationwide and explain I'm not paying the mortgage this month because I don't feel like it.... Astonished.

Wigglylines, you have to make an initial outlay to make an investment.

You may not see an outlay on that investment for many, many years. You also ignore the fact that if the government lets out a house which is paid for by housing benefit the return is 0. Plus it's something that requires continual investment to keep the property in good nick, fix it when it's broken. It's very unlikely it would ever offer any kind of return at all. We simply can't afford it, even Labour wouldn't be crazy enough to do that. And as for private companies they won't do it if they have to pay high wages, high corporation tax and then charge low rent. All while keeping the housing they've already built in a liveable state.

Expanding the requirement for new builds to have an element of social housing in them. That way the profits (which are substantial) from private builds pay.

But you're living in an absolute dream world if you think cheap housing built by high paid workers then let for low rent or no rent would be a money spinner for the government.

Yesterday 10:47 SoonToBeSix

Lotus you clearly don't know the first thing about economics. You do NOT run a country like a family. You need to borrow money to run a country it's a not a negative thing.

Ok soontobesix. Where does that money come from? Is there a very altruistic oil state handing this money over out of the goodness of their hearts and saying 'pay us back whenever'

At some points in an economic cycle a country will borrow, hence a deficit. Other times they will have a surplus, it all comes around. we should be operating a surplus as one of the largest economies, but we aren't because our internal maths doesn't stack up.

Wiggly, your housing theory assumes that prices of property will continue to rise. It's not an investment if the market collapses.

It's nice to think that there would be a sense of community and we could build all these new properties and the tenants would keep the area looking pristine, but experience proves that it doesn't happen.

It's like a hire car vs your own car, you don't look after it as well, floor it when you probably wouldn't your own car.

This is why there are swathes of property in the north west and North east worth next to nothing.

It's a nice plan in theory, but it doesn't work and we have the proof.