Mortgage rates / interest etc

[Terry - Somerset]

No need for crystal balls - one way or another it needs tight state control so that that innocent non-speculating home buyers/occupiers will be secure. And also to constrain prices instead of the mad free-for-all disruption of the last 50 or more years, with our lives ruled by gamblers and profiteers.

This betrays a touching belief in the competence of the state - not one I can subscribe to.

They have proven incapable of properly regulating the private sector where effective regulation is clearly of social benefit - eg: banking, energy, communications, building standards etc etc etc.

Examples of state control consistently improving the wealth and health of a society are somewhat hard to find. Perhaps I am no looking hard enough!

Or perhaps they don't exist - the two traditional large socialist proponents (China and USSR) failed to eliminate poverty and inequality. One has now evolved into a dominant market economy and the other a corrupt and violent dictatorship.

 

[Jacob]

This betrays a touching belief in the competence of the state - not one I can subscribe to.

It's all we have, there is no alternative.

They have proven incapable of properly regulating the private sector where effective regulation is clearly of social benefit - eg: banking, energy, communications, building standards etc etc etc.

Were doing fine but these things have steadily been eroded by free market idealogues. Grenfell Tower a good example of what happens when building control is dispersed and privatised.

Examples of state control consistently improving the wealth and health of a society are somewhat hard to find. Perhaps I am no looking hard enough!

You are not looking at all.
Think of NHS, state education, state sponsorship, investment, development support, infrastructure across the board

Or perhaps they don't exist - the two traditional large socialist proponents (China and USSR) failed to eliminate poverty and inequality.

Which non-socialist state has achieved either of these?

One has now evolved into a dominant market economy and the other a corrupt and violent dictatorship.

"Socialist" is just a word, China and USSR obviously doing very different things. Fall of communism unfortunately arrived with the rise of fundamentalist free-market theories, so Russia was effed over twice;* Gorbachev was being advised by Thatcher and Reagan! What a tragic wasted opportunity; one deranged ideology replaced by one possibly worse!
*PS or three times if you count the empire.
n.b. if you adopt a loose but sensible description of "socialism" then it's apparent that all modern economies are "socialist" to a large extent. Wouldn't work otherwise.
"24 Aug 2022 — The government of the United Kingdom's total managed expenditure as a share of gross domestic product was 44.6 percent" UK government spending as a share of GDP 2022 | Statista

 

[D_W]

I'm not sure if you read what I wrote. There are folks on the left(you know, "commies"), who clamour for renationalisation of the utility companies. Their point is that the private utility companies are run for the benefit of the shareholders, added to which a lot of our utility companies are owned by nasty foreigners. My point is/was that, because of the way the energy market works these days, whereby you can buy your gas or electricity from anywhere(even though it comes through the same pipes/cables, and looks, smells and feels exactly the same - which is very confusing), a state owned utility company would have to be competitive, or it wouldn't get off the ground. So we don't have to renationalise the entire industry.
I don't personally know if a state run energy supplier, competing in the open market would work or not. I'm merely saying that it would only need a minimal cost experiment to find out.

I get all of that. The co-ops operate in the same environment here. Utilities have been "deregulated" leaving a supplier able to provide you with the power based on their grid control, but they have to file with the utility commission. Aside from that, you can shop around or use the distribution's default generation source. Where I live, the default is owned by a sister company - which is the remnants of what used to be the local "you got no choice" utility.

Subjectively, separating the two led to flat costs for a while as the utilities had gotten pretty lax, and also realized at the same time that if they increased costs, their regulated margin would be a bigger nominal amount. Increasing costs means spending money on equipment, structures as well as offering and enormous menu of benefits to employees that aren't generally available in the private sector.

Costs for all utilities are going up due to compliance and replacement, though. Electric less so than others like Sewer and Water. Environmental compliance for water and sewer has tripled rates.

which brings me to a point - when the government is the only player, there's nobody to really lobby hard about adding more and more red tape. There is bureaucracy, of course. But once the government becomes a regulator of various businesses, they lose "that's too many rules" sense that they had when they were the generator and distributor with no choice. I don't know how well they would do in a new stand-in if they were subjected to the same amount of scrutiny now, lawsuits, etc. public power generation here wasn't the cleanest thing in the world, but since it was a public utility at that point, people sort of looked away. Power generation here now is extremely clean compared to what it was just 20 years ago. I have asthma, it's mild, but could tell the difference when all of the coal plants in the valley west of me (for a couple of hundred miles) suddenly got mothballed due to cheap natural gas.

 

[D_W]

Which non-socialist state has achieved either of these?

None - you will never have a society where some people don't mind being poor. One of my dad's brothers seems to enjoy it, he chose it as a career as a rational choice and based on the way he likes to operate, I can't say he's that irrational.

Too, if you take someone who lives reasonably well in a socialist state on relative terms and call them not poor, but take someone who lives twice as well in a crony capitalist society and call them poor, of course you won't eliminate poverty.

Plus, you have the opportunity, like Cuba or Venezuela, to blame someone else as long as you can stay in power doing so.

 

[Jester129]

In 2 years or thereabouts there will be an election. If Labour wins, then inflation will go up. Fix your rate for 5 years at least.

 

[Keith Cocker]

 

[Jacob]

In 2 years or thereabouts there will be an election. If Labour wins, then inflation will go up. Fix your rate for 5 years at least.

Inflation is good news for mortgages and other forms of debt, as long as your income is index linked or otherwise also inflating. It means the real value of the debt is falling and is easier to repay.
So if Labour causes inflation and you are in debt then make sure you vote Labour!
It's easy to forget that "economics" as a subject is largely created by the better off and is about how to preserve/increase their wealth.
It's a different picture if you aren't one of them yourself, and more concerned with reducing your debts.
PS My parents I recall always talked nervously of "being in the red" (in debt) until some time in the early 60s they suddenly realised that they could pay off their little mortgage. I don't know who they credited but it was inflation what dunnit.

 

[Mark65]

Deleted

 

[Jacob]

I can't understand why as soon as they land on the beach they are not put back on a ferry straight away and returned to France, the French are laughing all the way to the bank.

It's called a "humanitarian" issue.
Tells you all about it here: Humanitarianism - Wikipedia hope that helps.

Sooner or later the spineless government will just let them stay, labour would be a hundred times worse, we have an East euro car wash near my house, do you think the bloke that runs it is paying his workers minimum wage or paying what taxes he should, I doubt it, it will come to a head sooner or later and the dung may just hit the fan.

It's come to a head already and we are suffering the consequences of shortage of labour at all levels of skill.
And as far as the immigrants are concerned the dung has already hit the fan back home and that is why they are here instead.
The trouble is - as life gets more difficult the angry brigade tend to get even angrier and more irrational.

 

[Jameshow]

It's called a "humanitarian" issue.
Tells you all about it here: Humanitarianism - Wikipedia hope that helps.

It's come to a head already and we are suffering the consequences of shortage of labour at all levels of skill.
And as far as the immigrants are concerned the dung has already hit the fan back home and that is why they are here instead.
The trouble is - as life gets more difficult the angry brigade tend to get even angrier and more irrational.

Did you not say earlier unemployment would rise?!!
Either you have a labour shortage or you have unemployment?!

 

[Jameshow]

View attachment 146837

Tony Blair came to power in 1997.

Free tuition came to end in 1998

PFI started in late 1990's

Internal market was promoted by Blair...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_internal_market

 

[Jacob]

Did you not say earlier unemployment would rise?!!

er - no? Not that I can recall.

Either you have a labour shortage or you have unemployment?!

We have a labour shortage and record low unemployment. Most visibly in the NHS (UK's largest employer) but also elsewhere.

 

[Jacob]

Tony Blair came to power in 1997.

Free tuition came in 1998

You mean student loans. Tuition got more expensive.

PFI started in late 1990's

Internal market was promoted by Blair...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_internal_market

Yep. Blair was a big let down and all hot air.

 

[Jameshow]

You mean student loans. Tuition got more expensive.

Yep. Blair was a big let down and all hot air.

Sorry to end .

 

[Mark65]

not worth going over

 

[Jacob]

......
The trouble is - as life gets more difficult the angry brigade tend to get even angrier and more irrational.

Forget to add: ... and then the craziest of the crazies gets spurred into action; Jo Cox murder, or fire bomb in immigration centre. Then there may be a pause for thought!

 

[D_W]

Reality with the NHS and other programs that were "free" not being as easy to do now has a whole lot more to do with utilization and cost than it does sneaky thieves taking away all that's good from the "working people", which is a strange label itself.

Statista's summary site here shows NHS as 5% of GDP in 1980. 12% currently. 10% prior to the collapse of GDP in the UK, so costs effectively doubled even before considering the current economy-shrink spiral.

5% of GDP isn't "nothing". It's the product of end users being more comfortable seeking health care and no complementary utilization management to stop it.

it does dovetail well with the "yes, someone else should pay the extra 5%" mentality, though.

 

[D_W]

in 1980, 15% of the population enrolled in full time education after age 18

That figure is currently 38%.

Is that inconvenient to talk about? Who took the money, the 23% more who are going to school instead of working?

Who owes the money to everyone? "someone else" who isn't going to college or isn't a stakeholder?

 

[johna.clements]

Reality with the NHS and other programs that were "free" not being as easy to do now has a whole lot more to do with utilization and cost than it does sneaky thieves taking away all that's good from the "working people", which is a strange label itself.

Statista's summary site here shows NHS as 5% of GDP in 1980. 12% currently. 10% prior to the collapse of GDP in the UK, so costs effectively doubled even before considering the current economy-shrink spiral.

5% of GDP isn't "nothing". It's the product of end users being more comfortable seeking health care and no complementary utilization management to stop it.

it does dovetail well with the "yes, someone else should pay the extra 5%" mentality, though.

Statista shows that the USA spent 8.9% of GDP on health care in 1980. Whilst the UK was 5.1%.

The US spent 75% more as a percentage of GDP than the UK in 1980.

In 2019 (expenditure jumped in 2020 for some reason) the USA spent 17.6% and the UK spent 9.9% of GDP on health care.

The US spent 77% more as a percentage of GDP than the UK in 2019.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184968/us-health-expenditure-as-percent-of-gdp-since-1960/
https://www.statista.com/statistics...ture-as-a-share-of-gdp-in-the-united-kingdom/
Life expectancy in the USA is 79.1 in the UK it is 81.8 years.

The USA pays 75% more to live nearly three fewer years.

 

[D_W]

Johna - are you trying to avoid why care may not be free and university may not be free?

We have a problem in my opinion, in the US. People like to go to get health care for things they caused themselves (obesity, etc, poor sleep habits, whatever it may be). The health care system doesn't mind seeing those patients if they come through the door and pay, or the government pays on their behalf.

The quality of care here is better than the quality of care there.

The average health of the patients outside of the healthcare system isn't.

You worked hard to avoid the actual topic here, and your statistic implying that health care in the UK is the cause for the difference in life expectancy is errant. For example, california, new york and hawaii all have higher life expectancies than the UK.

Both New York and California have higher obesity rates, and in combination, substantially vs. the UK, but higher life expectancies.

Hawaii has a very low obesity rate for the states, slightly lower than the UK, but a life expectancy 1.5 years longer.

You could answer the original implied question, though - health care spending on a nominal basis due to the difference in GDP share is up somewhere around 300 billion. Should you just "get it from the rich"? (anyone who is of higher means than the person being surveyed?)

University stats are a little less easy to quantify. googler says 43 billion pounds of spending on higher education (public funds). What share of that covers the 2 1/2 times as large crowd as 1980, anyone know?

Let's say that in the end, the additional funds needed would be another 50 billion pounds for "Free for all" university.

Who is the gatekeeper given the enrollment has already more than doubled and quite a lot of the enrollees probably do not improve society by going?

We are now up to total "should be free" costs increasing to somewhere around 10% of the whole GDP. Not as a share of the GDP, that's just the increase.

Maybe some of the cost should be laid on the people creating those costs.

maybe when someone puts a political poster up claiming things have been taken away, they should include some information about what's more likely - the nominal government amount paid on behalf of citizens for both health care and university subsidies is probably higher than it's ever been. The takers are just getting too good at taking and not good enough at making.