To think Corbyn's maths is wrong again

[Rebeccaslicker]

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/28/jeremy-corbyn-announces-labour-will-buy-every-homeless-person/amp/

How is this going to work? Does he mean "give" as in legally transfer or does he mean no rent? How does he think the houses are going to be maintained and utility bills paid? Is it fair on people who've been on waiting lists? Is it really going to reduce the numbers of homeless people if it becomes seen as a quick way to skip the queue?

I got back to my car in an NCP the other night, to find 5 homeless people right next to it with foil and needles. They were also going through some wallets (which may well have been their own; I didn't stop to check of course). The state of them was very sad and although I did feel intimidated at first, I also didn't report them because I thought, where else would they go - it's chucking it down. But then again, no way would they be able to look after a house. They were like zombies.

He's absolutely right to want to do something about the homeless situation. There should be more lots more help. But I don't think this is the answer. AIBU?

Rebacca - Actually, I have run my own business. I became physically very unwell and couldn't work for a time, so I ran my own private sector company for a few years. It allowed me more flexibility to manage the treatment and surgery I had to go through.

I am not sure what you mean by "a bit more". It's a percentage. So yes, someone on £65,000 pays slightly less in tax than someone on £70,000. But it's the same percentage of pay. I do think that when incomes increase above a certain level of basic subsistence, the % of tax paid should increase too - because there is a greater level of surplus money above what is required to pay for necessities. So of course I should pay a higher % on my wage than someone who earns half as much. It's a no-brainer principle of fairness that I should.

Wrt the rich leaving, you react to this idea as if we live in an oligarchy where the opinions of some should count for more than the opinions of the rest of us, simply because they are wealthy. The thing about a democracy is that you don't have to convince a small number of people about the merits or demerits of a particular policy. You have to convince the majority.

Also, research suggests that it's only the very mobile global capital that does actually leave - people like yourself enjoy living in London for a whole variety of reasons - family, a lovely house, culture, language etc. We've seen higher tax rates for the wealthy previously in this country, post WW2, without a gigantic exodus of people. Personally, I couldn't care less if you do leave, though. I think there will be plenty of talented young things willing to fill the gaps you leave.

makeourfuture
A lot of the student debt will never be paid off. So this isn’t exactly the case. And yes, I understand the earning thresholds and housing crisis.

With the vast number of people going to university, it was never going to be sustainable to have free tuition at the point of entry. Hind sight is truly a glorious thing. The government in the 80’s for example couldn’t have predicted the swathes of students now arriving.

And it isn’t all the government to blame. When I went to university, it was hardly the glamorous place it is today. Universities these days are big business. When I went, they were educational institutions.

swathes of students now arriving

Should be just for people like yourself?

it will be a fraction of the money the DUP got
The DUP got ZERO money, the people of N.Ireland got some extra funding. Are you saying its only people in Scotland that are allowed extra money?

the Labour manifesto WAS costed. They said they'd raise just under £50m by taxing the rich NO it wasn't costed, just plucking figures out of the air and saying its costed does not make it so. There has to be credible financial plans that are validated by experts. Their financial plans were not credible and were not backed up by experts. Anyone can say the rich will pay for Utopia, but that does not make it possible in the real world.

Is there not the teensiest chance that he has, in fact, thought the obvious issues raised here about drugs etc. through, but that the Telegraph has chosen to oversimplify his stance for their own political gain?

But the small % increase that you're talking about - before your current lifestyle becomes unaffordable and you start to really feel it, despite working just as hard as you do now - won't raise the kind of money JC is talking about, will it? He's talking about much more substantial sums. How do you think he's going to do that? You probably think he's going to tax people in the higher income brackets than you at much higher rates? Because otherwise it won't raise enough money, will it?

And you think those higher earners should be glad to pay it. Well who knows, maybe you'll be proven right and they will be. It's only my opinion that they won't. Certainly I believe people like J K Rowling probably would. (Tony Blair and other rich lefties - not so much!)

And you're wrong. You have to convince the majority to vote for it. You have to convince the few to accept it. As for plugging the gap left when skills (and employers leave), just add the cost of all that training to Corbyn's bill, eh? It's not like another few zeros will make any difference. The experience they'll just have to pick up as they go along. (Of course, as they do that, you'd better hope they aren't also so dreadful as to be seduced by life somewhere else!)

Gauche - I linked to the independent article, I think - not sure they have the same agenda as the telegraph!

The DUP got ZERO money, the people of N.Ireland got some extra funding. Are you saying its only people in Scotland that are allowed extra money?

No. I am saying that before the election there was "no magic money tree" after after the election there was upwards of £1 billion for additional spending that wasn't previously costed. In some ways the destination of the money is irrelevant ... it seemingly came from nowhere.

With a government grasp of money like that, I'd say Corbyns maths simply cannot be any worse.

Let's see how much money has gone to Carillion and their ilk too. Not their pensioners, naturally. They're being bailed out from ... oh look ... a magic money tree.

The link in the header is to the Telegraph. Not that they have a vested interest in convincing people not to vote Labour

And the one beneath it is from the indie. So they balance each other out (well actually not, as I fucked up the telegraph link but not the indie one!).

If I see something that interests me I will try to read a range of reports on it, because I think that's a good idea to get a balanced view. Somewhere between the fail and the guardian might be a glimmer of realism

If it's so simple Babooshka, why didn't the last labour government do it? They were too busy letting immigration rise without first installing the right sort of infrastructure! (I am very pro immigration but I think we dropped a massive hairy bollock in not looking at housing, transport, doctors, schooling etc.)

NuLabour were basically Labour in nothing but name. It was under Blair/Brown that the horror story that is BTL came into existence and became attractive (no coincidence that Tony Blair is a multiple home owner and landlord). Brown was also responsible for changing the pension system so that it was more attractive to buy property as a pension and deregulating the financial sector. He was a complete idiot.

- you're assuming that the housing benefit bill would cover building all those houses. Or have you got stats to demonstrate that?

The housing benefit bill would cover a lot of house building. It is something like £10 billion a year, just being funneled into the pockets of private landlords (many of whom are foreign landlords so the money is taken out of the country and not recycled). Plus the Tories have enough money to hand over to the house builders via Help to Buy (why not just invest that in a mass social house building which as I have already stated would add state owned revenue generating assets rather than basically just giving a load of taxpayer money to private companies to pump up house prices so they profit).

- will the money also cover the new infrastructure that is needed? If you're planning to use council land in cities etc, how will they cope? If you're talking about rural land, what are you providing?

What are the private housebuilders doing at the moment to provide infrastructure? Most of them can't even build good quality houses that don't have low ceilings and paper thin walls, let alone schools and hospitals (which have been built via PFI agreements which have ended up costing the country billions in extra payments - how is that any more cost effective than getting the state to build them!?). If councils are allowed to build houses they will get a lot more council tax out of that which goes towards things like social care. The money gets recycled.

- what replaces the commercial properties that you're having the council convert to resi? Where does that money come from? How does the council raise the same money that it got from letting those properties?

A lot of commercial properties on brownfield sites are not making any money and a lot of the land is derelict/not being used. It is just wasted space that could provide homes and jobs.

- what do you think will happen if BTL landlords, or people who've moved and can't sell or don't want to sell because they are coming back, can't let their houses?

If a BTL can't sell their house they can reduce the price (supply and demand) until it does sell. Houses don't have an intrinsic value except what someone is willing to pay. And once a former rental house is sold it either becomes a rental again or is sold to an owner occupy. Former BTL houses don't disappear in a puff of smoke you know!

- how are you planning to recover the loss of tax on rental income from private landlords and the sales of BTL etc?

Many landlords pay very little tax as it is (if at all). There will still be things like stamp duty which applies to all sales, BTL or not and the only other tax that landlords pay is Capital Gains Tax. Perhaps introduce a tax on all capital gains (of all homes) to discourage house price inflation and using houses as assets to be traded rather than homes (that is partly what caused the financial crash in the first place - unregulated lending and allowing houses to become gambling chips).

You'd risk a significant loss of income for the treasury and a housing crash.

A housing crash would be good for a lot of people who are renting or would have to pay huge mortgages well into their 70s and would certainly cut things like the huge housing benefit bill (which currently covers ever increasing rents needed to cover ever increasing mortgage costs due to ever increasing house prices), health costs etc (poor quality, high housing costs makes everything else more expensive and causes a lot of health problems for poor people which ultimately costs society more via health and social care).

They're being bailed out from ... oh look ... a magic money tree.

How are Carillion being bailed out?

*If councils are allowed to build houses they will get a lot more council tax out of that which goes towards things like social care.

No, they'll get more council tax to enable them to empty the bins for those new houses, cut the grass on those new roads - don't know what bubble you're living in, but social care is being cut by councils everywhere.

Yep. And it's not just social care - e.g. one of the charities for which I am a trustee and fund raiser (it's related to education for children in deprived areas) used to rely heavily on the local council for donations. Now we get zero.

Some people in social housing don't pay council tax. So not all the new houses would be contributing to those services. And then there'd be more children to educate, etc etc.

How are Carillion being bailed out?

Their pension fund will have to receive a bailout from the taxpayer.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42853895

Shades of Maxwell.

Carillion fall out will cost the public sector millions to fix. Not just the pensions element.

As for cornyns idea - this isn’t just about visible homelessness. It’s about the thousands of people stuck in b&bs and temporary accommodation with nowhere to go.

Why do people let the private sector off the hook? They pay low wages, make sure the “Boss Class” are ok and are subsidised by the government via tax credits.

There’s no evidence that the privately sector is better. And the private sector couldn’t exist as it does without the public sector and vice versa so when will people stop pitting them againsr each other.

whiskey owl
I'm not sure you understand about progressive taxation.
Someone earning a higher amount already pays a higher proportion of their income, as they should. My figures may not be 100 percent accurate as I looked them up when I was researching the 2017 election promises. But they are ballpark accurate.

If you earn 40k, (already over national average) you will pay about 4k tax. You will benefit from your full personal allowance before income tax, and be able to claim child benefit.

If you earn 120k, ie 3 times as much, you might expect to pay 3 times as much tax. In fact you will pay 10 times as much, 40k. You also lose child benefit. At 100k of earnings, you begin to progressively lose your personal allowance (the 11or so k you get untaxed) so at 123k you get zero personal allowance and pay tax on ALL earnings as well as sliding into a higher tax band.

If you earn 120k let's face it you aren't poor, but neither are you living in a mansion in Cheshire, as you put it. If you earn 120k and pay 1/3 of your earnings in tax, you might feel like you are already contributing.

Of course people in that band could pay a bit more, but they are already paying their way. These are not greedy fatcats or multinationals avoiding tax.

One of the things that irritated me about the Corbyn manifesto was this 'othering' of "the rich" who are going to get slammed. If you earn 65k you aren't rich and can't afford to pay a penny more. If you pop over into 75k, you are suddenly a rich bastard who loathes those worse off than yourself and needs to stop being so bloody selfish. It's such divisive rhetoric.

If you earn £120k doesn’t that put you comfortably in the top 1%?

Dress it up as you like, but that’s the right reality.

Actually, I have run my own business.
Whiskyowl - I thought you said you were an academic? I presumed academics worked in universities but maybe I'm wrong.

Where will these 8000 homes be? Not great news for neighbours who have struggled to buy their own private homes only for the surrounding houses to become council owned properties occupied by addicts, alcoholics, etc. It also seems unfair of Corbyn to suggest that houses will be given to homeless ahead of people on waiting lists, who equally need decent homes and have waited patiently for a long time. And how is it fair that millions of young people work for a living but struggle to buy their own home, yet homeless people are just going to be handed one on a plate?

In any case, giving properties to homeless people won't solve the problem unless the issue of how they can support themselves is also dealt with. Will they receive benefits and be helped into work, or given support with drug and alcohol addiction, etc? Sticking them in a property won't solve anything.

Believeitornot - yes. But that wasn't the point. The point was, someone earning that amount is already paying a lot of tax. They're also more likely to have things like private healthcare and so to take less out of the system too. It's easy for people like whiskyowl who are earning and paying less to point the finger and say, "you! you're rich! You pay more!"

If you want people to pay more tax, that burden is going to fall more heavily on the higher earners. If they don't like it, they'll change (see the dentists who cut their hours to reduce tax bills) or leave. You can't just do the maths on the basis of a raised % and assume you'll collect that amount. This is (one of) the flaws in Corbyn's maths to me.

"Before your current lifestyle becomes unaffordable and you start to really feel it, despite working just as hard as you do now - won't raise the kind of money JC is talking about, will it? He's talking about much more substantial sums. How do you think he's going to do that? You probably think he's going to tax people in the higher income brackets than you at much higher rates? Because otherwise it won't raise enough money, will it? confused"

Yes, that's absolutely what I'm saying. That beyond a subsistence amount, money is "surplus" and that excessive "surplus" should be taxed at a much higher rate than subsistence. Hence my example that I should pay a higher % in taxation than someone who earns half as much as I do. So yes, of course I believe in progressive taxation.

Look at it this way: the battle to afford heating and food is NOT the same thing as the battle to afford Eton or a slightly less expensive food. The battle to pay hire purchase on a washing machine you can barely afford is NOT the same as the battle to afford a Bentley or a slightly less expensive car. Put simply, there are things that are needs, and there are things that are wants, and no-one should be able idly to indulge wants while other people suffer and struggle because basic needs are not being met.

There is an underlying moral issue here around that word "lifestyle", and this gets to the heart of the disagreement between us. I believe that no-one is "entitled" to a gilded lifestyle while someone else struggles and suffers on too little. You disagree, because you see looking after others in this way as a discouragement to personal greed and expenditure on one's self. You will turn around and tell me that I know nothing of human motivation or psychology, yet I know people who work day-in, day-out in jobs that aren't the best paid positions they could possibly get, because they find them satisfying and want to help others and this is a powerful motivating factor for them in life. For all your wealth, your Chelsea house, your six figure tax bill, I wouldn't be you for the world. To think so ill of one's fellow creatures as to believe that they are never motivated by love, care, or concern for others and only by selfishness and greed must be so depressing.

I earn £70k, my husband £80k.

I would pay more in tax.

However what I would prefer is to have a better way of ensuring that social housing could be built and rented at afforable levels.

The problem is greed. House builders want to take advantage of high house prices. Local authorities are not allowed to borrow to build (private house builders can) and the money from sales - they cannot keep to build more.

There are empty homes sitting there.

There is land sitting there.

There isn’t a lack of resources. It’s purely a lack of political will to make it happen.

And actually the tax burden is higher on those with lower incomes when you take into account regressive tax.

" It's easy for people like whiskyowl who are earning and paying less to point the finger and say, "you! you're rich! You pay more!""

I've been very explicit on this thread that I think I should pay more tax, and that I'm including my pay in the brackets of those who should pay more. Tax rises are needed into the middle classes, not just on the alpha wealthy.