"National Security can't come at the cost of Social Security" - WTAF?

[Binnyforthewin]

Surely our PM releases that without National Security there is no Social Security? One is entirely dependent on the other.

So you would move families with 2 working parents, barely scraping by but don’t qualify for any government support to areas of the country that are less well resourced for transport, health?

No, I would cap private rents thus reducing the welfare bill and making it easier for low income working families who rent.

No, where did I say I would?

People seem to find it unimaginable
to cap rents, yet not understand that the biggest net beneficiaries of HB are landlords.

Thats logical though? Who else would you be paying rent to and presumably that's what housing benefit is. Landlords aren't charities.

Me too. Lots of people with money move here and drive up house prices, increasing rents. HB still goes to landlords. There are very few local jobs, lowest vacancies and high test unemployment in the county, along with one of the higher crime rates. Move more people here, save a bit on housing benefit in the short term but limit their chances of ever coming off it.

Logical to let rents spiral ever upwards? If you benefit from it sure. If you’re a government/LA with a housing crisis and a rising welfare bill, it’s pretty logical to cap them.

Some landlords are indeed charities.

Well there would be no houses to rent then as no one would be a landlord if they can’t cover their costs

So the market would become flooded with properties as they all sold up then, driving down prices.

Exactly, although I never said I would cap them below cost. Housing Associations seem to manage just fine without charging ££££ for substandard housing.

I realise it would cause some short-term disruption and pain, but we cannot allow housing costs to keep spiralling the way they are. Housing is not a commodity to profit from; it is a basic human need. We don't live on a big enough landmass to have enough of it to also use it to line the pockets of the fortunate.

Hedge funds will more than likely buy up housing stock on behalf of foreign investors.

I couldn't agree more.

Or the government could buy them.

If the government brought in policies that forced independent landlords to have to dump properties enmasse onto the open market and then the government purchased those properties cheaply, I think that might be called Communism 😬

yes absolutely and many don’t rent them out but just hold them as a store of value

And if we made it costly to do this by raising the already-existing empty homes premium to a level that made parking money in London, etc., unfeasible, then this wouldn't happen.

That's something we should be doing anyway. There are estimated to be approximately 300,000 homes empty long-term, while 136,000 households are stuck in temporary accommodation costing the taxpayer £££. It's madness.

They wouldn't be forced to sell.

There are tens of thousands of rented homes owned by private equity firms.

We have plenty of cheap housing, including social housing. What we don't have plenty of is jobs, colleges and training centers, properly functioning public transport and healthcare.

That's why I said that I'd move those who don't work. It really doesn't matter for society and tax payers if they don't work in SW London or don't work in the middle of nowhere. Children in non-working households are vanishingly unlikely to become productive members of society anyway no matter where they live. So let's just reduce the bill by moving them. And who knows, maybe a threat of being moved out of some of the most expensive areas in the country will insentivise some to actually get a job?

"And you will believe a war criminal charged with genocide"
No international court or judicial body has found Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu guilty of genocide.
Please do not promulgate misinformation.

Absolute economic illiteracy, the public sector in many cases does create wealth as does the private sector. The two are very much joined. Google for example provides educational platforms for schools and colleges, without public money that service would not exist and Google would close that platform, laying off workers and shrinking it's balance sheet. Workers would lose jobs, share prices might take a dip and theoretically there's been in a dip in wealth creation.

I could name many more but it's pointless when people can't actually see that many many very big companies do very well from government money.

What you are confusing is the balance of growth and what level of taxation actually stops growth or even reverses it..but that's an entirely different subject

Children in non-working households are vanishingly unlikely to become productive members of society anyway no matter where they live.

This is untrue. The ONS publish data on this. Children who grow up in workless households are less likely than others to work, but their employment rate is about 50% (compared to 70% average) and the gap narrows with age.

Most children from workless households do not simply become permanently workless adults.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/youngpeopleinthelabourmarketbysocioeconomicbackgrounduk/2014to2021

You can force landlords to sell up by simply making policy changes.

Well there's an arrest warrant and he can no longer pop to Canada or Spain or the UK or France or Norway or Sweden or Turkey..... without being arrested to stand trial for genocide