Some economists blame Town Country regulations point blank, but the very same new middle-class towni

In a much earlier  post , Tim Worstall pointed to the findings of  Blanchflower Oswald (2013) , which is particularly park hotel minneapolis airport important when considering that increasing home-ownership park hotel minneapolis airport is something that the government has been encouraging. park hotel minneapolis airport They showed “that rises in home ownership lead to three problems: (i) lower levels of labour mobility, (ii) greater park hotel minneapolis airport commuting times, and (iii) fewer new businesses.” Alarmingly, they found that “rises in the home-ownership rate in a U.S State are a precursor to eventual sharp rises in unemployment in that state… a doubling of the rate of home-ownership in a U.S. State is followed in the long-run by more than a doubling of the later unemployment rate”. They also postulated that since “the time lags are long”, this could explain why “these important patterns are so little-known.” This means that the “negative park hotel minneapolis airport externalities” felt from housing policy in this time-period may be felt further park hotel minneapolis airport down the line and that future generations may be in for a nasty unemployment shock.
In the UK, we have lots of council housing but still, park hotel minneapolis airport we supposedly don’t have enough low-cost housing. Milton Friedman famously suggested that, if we want to continue funding education in a way whilst ensuring that it is of a higher quality than what is currently provided by state schools, we should introduce  education vouchers . Analogously, if we insist that society should house those who cannot house themselves, park hotel minneapolis airport why don’t we introduce accommodation vouchers or housing vouchers which people can spend either on an extremely cheap mortgage (though, admittedly, the claim is that we’re short of low-cost housing) or on going towards rent for another place.
If current tenants of council housing are given the choice between vouchers and their current unit, we may see enough people move out for the council housing itself to be sold to real-estate developers which would, therefore, enable development of more accommodation over and above pre-existing units. This would help plug some of the government’s budget deficit, possibly increase the amount of low-cost housing and ensure dispersion rather park hotel minneapolis airport than concentration of relative poverty (this last possibility would enable effective local, communal altruism).
park hotel minneapolis airport Of course, such a policy may not be feasible in London where rents are already very high (due to the government’s ridiculous park hotel minneapolis airport land-use policies) since accommodation vouchers may only serve to increase them further. park hotel minneapolis airport However, in the rest of the country, rents are far more reasonable and haven’t grown as quickly park hotel minneapolis airport as they have in London.
Ultimately, the provision of accommodation vouchers in regions outside of London and the sale of council houses could raise some much-needed revenue and lead to reduced house cost and increased labour mobility at the cost of higher rents.
Vishal, I ve a great deal of time for both Blanchflower and Oswald they re both trend setters in various economic topics but I haven t read their joint paper yet. I m too bushed at present from the previous thread s discussion.
But from the title alone of their paper, I would say that they are undoubtedly correct. The modern increasingly specialised job market (for those who get a decent job) leads to more family mobilty (that is among those who have enough qualifications). When I read the paper I will be carefully searching for any worries they might have about the commensurate park hotel minneapolis airport decline in local communities a very important component of individual happiness. (The topic of individual park hotel minneapolis airport happeness and its relativity is something on which Oswald has already led some very interesting research). I might return, but I might have already said as much as I d want to say anyway.
I won t be reading it. I see that the paper is only available by purchase. I don t read any paper unless its principal finding or new idea is not good for flying of its own accord. A pity about Oswald. I spent many years of leisure time when a young man ensconced in Warwick University s bookshop which provided me with books I couldn t afford park hotel minneapolis airport to buy or which Coventry City Central Library wouldn park hotel minneapolis airport t order for me (though to give it credit it once obtained a book of Russian Impressionist paintings from Russia during the Cold War! About three inches thick it was and weighed a ton. It took about two years and must have cost as much in postal charges as the library s annual ordering budget.
Vishal, it looks as though your own contribution is passing without much discussion but because I woke early this morning, I ll make one or two. But before that let me suggest that Blanchflower Oswald s third point, being the least obvious, might be the most important one. But only if governments persist in trying to formulate their country s overall economic policy over the longer term. This is suggests that what passes for the territory of a country is not necessarily the same as what can be considered an economic entity. The viable and unviable parts of a nation-state can wax and wane in all sorts of different ways according to how subsidiary cultures within it react to technical innovations as they occur.
As to your own suggestions, I really wouldn t like to express any firm opinion. The rise and fall of housing concentrations has changed enormously with environmental changes, being increasingly volatile in recent centuries due to technical park hotel minneapolis airport innovations within park hotel minneapolis airport the environment. In this country we already have a very high density of population in comparison with the rest of the world, and that must also be considered within a culture that gives a very high rating to the natural environment. This country has done much more than most in changing the natural environment we had a thousand or two years ago. It now seems that we want to hang more strongly than most countries on what we have left.
Much of what is proposed for housing policy and then carried out becomes counter-productive within a relatively short while and we can t really put numbers to it in terms of vector strengths. How do we measure overall feelings for the environment against park hotel minneapolis airport actual housing need? We know that almost all land in the country is owned by a small fraction of the population. park hotel minneapolis airport What do they think about the environment as a whole? What is the covert strength of their influence in governmental conversations park hotel minneapolis airport compared with the more formal planning deliberations? Considerable, it would seem. But how considerable? How can we make housing policy-making (if that s wise anyway) more transparent?
Some economists blame Town Country regulations point blank, but the very same new middle-class townies of the 1920s and 30s who ventured into the countryside by way of ribbon development along the arterial roads of our most prosperous cities are the same new middle-class that initiated the original regulations to prevent too many others doing so. And the even richer individuals above them who already own most of the land anyway why are they not tumbling over themselves to make more pots of money by developing their own countryside land?
In short, there s a largely unknown, unseen drama going on and until we can see the dramatis personae a great deal more clearly it s a complex subject. Robert Ardrey first suggested a human territorial imperative which was poo-poo d during a period when instincts were out of fashion in the academic world of biology but maybe it s a lot stronger than we urbanites realize.
A very different set of middle-class townies. On one side you have John Laing and his rivals, on the other you have Attlee and local authority bureaucrats. Some of the current NIMBYS may be grandchildren of those who joined the rush out of town in the 1930s, but not many of them.
Let us suppose, for the sake odf argument, thjat Tim Worstall mentioned David Blanchflowerr for some reason other than to mock him. Let us further suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is a correlation between an increase in home ownership in US states and a subsequent rise in unemployment.
[At this point I must confess park hotel minneapolis airport to not having read the paper because, having heard Professor Blanchflower speak at a conference and having read some of his other writings I'm not going to waste good money paying him to read it]. There other possible reasons for correlation.
Why does the home-ownership %age double? Well, usually because factory/office/shop/mineworking wages have risen significantly relative to house prices and by inference to wages in the building and building material industries. So what does that imply for competitiveness? It has got much worse for established industries in that state. The latter causes a sharp rise in unemployment.
I can well believe that home ownership does reduce the flexibility of the labour market but the rise in wage costs necessary park hotel minneapolis airport to double homeownership is almost certainly going to have a large impact on unemployment than the difference between the willingness of a renter and an owner to move to find a new job.
These vouchers will do *nothing* to help those in actual need since Housing Benefit makes up the difference park hotel minneapolis airport between their rent and what they are deemed to be able to afford, so it would just be yet another hand-out to those who don t need it.
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