[Diggers350] These benefits are a compensation for land stolen over the centuries

[Joan Lawson]

Hi Tony

I don't think we're far apart on this.  But "Politics is the art of the possible" & I'm looking very short term (while being as keen as you are to see redistribution and a whole new system.)  When I speak of "market" I mean a fair mechanism for exchange & not the current cess-pit often refered to by that name.  Also I am certainly not saying that HB should be withdrawn & not replaced with any other form of support. That would result in mass homelessness, as you say.  

For many people who do not intend to stay in one place for very long, renting is logical. But tenants need protection from exploitation, opportunity to make choices and a balance between rental cost and income. This applies whether people are in receipt of benefits or not.  

This email will be unreasonably long if I explain how this could be achieved, but it's possible.  However, it would just be one very small step towards the kind of redistribution you and I would like to see.

Cheers

Joan


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Tony Gosling 
  To: Massimo 
  Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 12:24 AM
  Subject: [Diggers350] These benefits are a compensation for land stolen over the centuries


    
  Hi Joan,
  Housing should never be a 'market' as markets are faling and we cannot afford to have everyones roofs over their heads fail.
  Housing bubble is largely responsible for our present woes.
  Without Housing Benefit we really would have mass homelessness. Indeded only people with full time or the best part time jobs would have anywhere to live. 
  Terrible deprivation. Back to the worse excesses of the 19 twenties or thirties.
  These benefits are a compensation for land stolen over the centuries as the economic system - through asset stripping industry and a reliance on casino banking - has slowly ground to a halt and big business and The City Of London who are the real government have entered (after they kicked out Harlod WIlson in the 1970s) into 'the unemployment is good' mode - because they need a massive pool of unemployed to help them force down pay and conditions and job security  - - and ultimately turn their money into the only power in the land

  Britain's 1,000 richest persons made gains of £155bn in last 3 years
  April 29th, 2012 
  http://www.michaelmeacher.info/weblog/2012/04/britains-1000-richest-persons-made-gains-of-155bn-in-last-3-years/ 
  http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=161039#161039
  The Sunday Times Rich List, published today and compulsory reading for anybody who wants to understand Britain's power structure today, holds three extremely significant conclusions. One is that the 1,000 richest persons in the UK have increased their wealth by so much in the last 3 years - £155bn - that they themselves alone could pay off the entire UK budget deficit and still leave themselves with £30bn to spare which should be enough to keep the wolf from the door. The second, even more staggering, is that whilst the rest of the country is being crippled by the biggest public expenditure and benefits squeeze for a century, these 1,000 persons, containing many of the bankers and hedge fund and private equity operators who caused the financial crash in the first place, have not been made subject to any tax payback whatever commensurate to their gains. This is truly a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. 
  The third is that despite the biggest slump for nearly a century, the slowest and most anaemic recovery, and prolonged austerity stretching to a decade or more, this ultra-rich clique are now sitting on wealth even greater than what they had amassed at the height of the boom just before the crash. Their combined wealth is now estimated at more than £414bn, equivalent to more than a third of Britain's entire GDP. They include 77 billionaires and 23 others whose wealth exceeds £750m. 
  Despite these massive repositories of wealth, these are some of the very people to whom Osborne gifted £3bn in his recent budget by cutting the 50p tax rate. That measure alone gave 40,000 UK millionaires an extra average £14,000 a week, at the same time as those on very low incomes in receipt of working tax credits who couldn't find an employer to increase their hours of work from 16 to 24 a week were being deprived in the same budget of £77 a week, around a third of their income, through their tax credits being withdrawn. 
  In 1997 the wealth of the richest 1,000 amounted to £99bn. The increase in their wealth over the last 15 years has therefore been £315bn. If this increase in wealth were subject to capital gains tax at the current 28% rate, it would yield £88bn, and that alone would pay off more than 70% of the total budget deficit. However Osborne seems to share the notorious view of the New York heiress, Leonora Helmsley: "taxes are only for the little people".

  Without a Biblical style Jubilee where all the land is redistributed to everyone in Britain that wants it nobody can build any future for themselves or their family because big businbess has seen that if they take away our security of tenure and our homes then they can get us to do anything for money - including building nuclear power stations, joining prvate security firms - 

  We have to redistribute land and nationalise the banks in the public interest or we will have a civil war on our hands.
  Trouble is the mass media in the UK shuts out the only solutions (debt default like Iceland did so happily and banking nationalisation) and makes them taboo.
  The present system massively rewards the greedy. 
  It's little better than an antdeluvian civilisation in reverse type descent into only one human value - bribery.
  We have to take greed out of the system so when a greedy bad boss arrives on the scene he (or she) 's emloyees vote with their boots and leave.

  Your little plan to get rid of housing benefit would really smash the poorest people in the land which really is only doing the banksers dirty work for them.


  Tony


  At 08:42 10/05/2012, you wrote:


     

    James, I agree with everything you say but would like to add a bit.
     
    A huge part of the problem is the very existence of Housing Benefit.  It separates out housing from other essential, but only for those who rent, so
     
    1. It assumes that owner occupiers have no housing cost (taking no account of the cost of maintaining property explains why owner occupied housing  is in poor repair in some cases).
    2. Rented accommodation has ceased to be a market good and landlords have been raking in taxpayers money.
    3. The proportion of income spent on housing (which Engles found to be a good measure of wealth/poverty) has no meaning, since "income" in the form of HB rises as rent rises independent of other variables.
    4. People are not able to make rational housing choices and are not encouraged to save money because flat sharing, for example,  results in money being saved by the government, not by the tennants.
    ... and so on.
     
    In short the invention of HB was awful social policy, successive governments have failed to recognise this and now the ConDems are penalising the poor for being trapped by a monster which the state created!  Capping HB. or even introducing controlled rents, won't really solve this. HB has to go!
     
    Joan
     
    . 

      ----- Original Message ----- 

      From: James (by way of Tony Gosling <tony at cultureshop.org.uk>) 

      To: Massimo 

      Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 3:01 AM

      Subject: [Diggers350] "I can afford to pay the rent - most people can't"


       



      Owen Jones: I can afford to pay the rent - most people can't











      To get a two-bed place in Tower Hamlets you need more than double the median household income


      I already knew that Britain was in the throes of an escalating housing crisis, but, on the move for the first time in two-and-a-half years and, having been protected from soaring rents by a benevolent landlord, I was in for an unwelcome meeting with reality. Looking for a modest two-bedroom place in London's Zone 2 - with a housemate who, appropriately enough, works for a housing charity - I found that a standard monthly individual rent was £800, even £900. One estate agent asked what our maximum budget was: when I suggested £700 each a month, he spluttered down the phone. How many can actually afford - and I mean "have sufficient money left over to have a decent existence after paying the landlord" - these sorts of rents?


      Inevitably, I took to Twitter to vent. I was stunned by the response. Hundreds of furious Londoners bombarded me with their renting horror stories. One had a 35 per cent rent hike imposed on them at Christmas; another was forced to desert their Stockwell flat after a 40 per cent increase. "My tiny flat in the East End went up by £200 a month for the next occupants when I left," freelancer Scott Bryan tweeted me. "It was £600 already. Eyewatering." Another abandoned their own "tiny flat" in Zone 3 after their monthly rent went from £720 to £950.


      Private landlords can do as they please, of course. Having a roof over your head is a basic human requirement and, when there is a lack of houses to go around, it is a need that can be exploited. A landlord knows that, if their tenants don't like an outrageous rent hike, their only option is to put themselves back at the mercy of the ever more pricey private renting market.


      According to Shelter, annual rents in inner London went up by 7 per cent last year - or just under £1,000 for a two-bedroom house. When people's wages are flat-lining, that's a big hit. Of course, some landlords - like mine - can be benevolent; others ruthlessly profiteering. It is a complete lottery.


      I'm no victim. I can afford a high rent, even if it rankles. That is not the case for most. The number of us privately renting has soared: One in six households now have private landlords. And it is no longer largely the preserve of students and young people. Indeed, the number of families with children forced to privately rent has nearly doubled in just five years to more than a million. They face the prospect of having to repeatedly move, disrupting the education and overall wellbeing of their kids.


      Greedy landlords are fully aware that most cannot afford to pay their extortionate rents. But they also know that the taxpayer will step in and subsidise them with housing benefits. According to the Homes for London campaign, to get a two-bed place in Camden, you need an average monthly household income of £5,324; in Tower Hamlets - one of the poorest boroughs in Britain - it's £4,333, way over double Britain's median household income. It's the state that tops up the difference. Back in 2002, 100,000 private renters in London were claiming housing benefit; it soared to 250,000 by the time New Labour was booted out.


      But Cameron's Government has decided to punish the tenant, imposing a housing benefit cap that will force many out of their homes. London is on course to be more like Paris: with a centre that is a playground for the affluent, while the poorest are confined to the edges.


      Here are the consequences of Thatcher's ideological war on council housing. Her mentor, Keith Joseph, argued right-to-buy would spur on "embourgeoisement". Instead, it has left five million people languishing on social housing waiting lists, and millions at the mercy of private landlords. Council housing has been intentionally demonised as something to escape from, and the lack of stock to go around has left it prioritised for those most in need. We've come far from Nye Bevan's vision of council housing supporting mixed communities, replicating "the lovely feature of the English and Welsh village, where the doctor, the grocer, and the farm labourer all lived on the same street".


      But rather than leave millions at the mercy of the mini autocrats of the rented sector, a new wave of council housing would offer accountable landlords, without the absurdity of market rates. Instead of wasting billions on housing benefit, we could spend it on building housing, creating jobs and stimulating the economy.


      We could learn a lot about private renting from Germany. Local government sets the maximum rent for flats. The landlord cannot arbitrarily impose dramatic hikes; increases can only come in regulated steps. Such a solution would be good for the British taxpayer, bringing down the housing benefit bill without kicking the tenant. This ever-worsening housing crisis is just a striking example of a society based around the needs of profit, rather than people.


      We were told the free market would liberate the individual: instead, it leaves them trapped by the whims of landlords, financially less free, and banished from entire communities. It is a con - and an expensive con at that.


      twitter.com/@OwenJones84 



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