KentVillan

This kind of take just annoys me. It gets thrown around all the time in relation to all kinds of issues (Brexit, Trump, antivax, Tv etc). He’s making out like 20 or 30 years ago everyone sat down with a doorstopper book by an academic historian and read it cover to cover. Being uninformed is not a new thing. Most people have always been uninformed about most subjects. It’s really hard to know about a subject in any depth, but in fact it’s got a lot easier to find good information with the rise of the internet… not worse. I hate this idea that we live in a unique era of widespread idiocy and ignorance. We really don’t.

Yeah I'm trying to follow the 80/20 rule now. Bit hard sometimes to rein it in, but notice the benefits when I do go quicker

On the subject of endorphins, I've found that reducing my alcohol intake and eating healthier, combined with doing a lot more easy / low heartrate runs, I get that strong endorphin buzz most times I run now. Whereas before I was trying to push quite hard (or very hard!) on most runs and often running through a hangover. It still worked to clear the hangover out of my system, but it was much more of a mental struggle. As much as its nice to occasionally empty the tank and see what you can do, those easy runs where you've got a bit left in the tank at the end just leave you feeling great, especially on a nice day.

Well to be fair, it's Johnson, and even when he's right there's usually an element of stupidity there. But I do agree he's been broadly right on Ukraine. Although allowing Liz Truss to be Foreign Secretary during potential WWIII and Priti Patel to be Home Secretary during a refugee crisis is hardly the work of a genius. Credit where credit's due, though.

Yes, that's a fair point, but I suppose a better way to illustrate it is to compare cities and countries, and look at obvious examples where one city (with similar resources) has clearly done something more efficiently on a similar budget. For example, big cities that have poor public transport vs similar cities that have good metro / tram / bus / cycle networks. In the city with poor public transport, people just spend rush hours sitting in traffic jams, they have to leave the house earlier to get to work at the same time, they spend more on fuel, they have to own a car, the air quality is worse. They gain almost nothing from this. Aggregate it up across the whole population and it's just wasted economic potential and reduced quality of life. Or countries that invested heavily in high-speed broadband while other countries left most of the population on dialup modems. Did saving that money really save everyone money or was it just a brake on the economy? I think the housing supply problem is a bit like that. It's a problem that nobody really benefits from, and the downsides are very apparent. And the solution, while incurring some short term cost in taxation or govt debt, clearly improves the economy and makes most people's lives (across all strata of society) much better. It's fine to say, "well these wealthy people buying up housing bring money to the local economy", but where do the people on the receiving end of that money (retail staff, leisure & hospitality workers, tradesmen, teachers, hospital workers, bus drivers, taxi drivers, street cleaners, gardeners, etc) live nearby to provide those services? Is the expectation that they all drive to the idyllic holiday village from 20 miles away everyday? A functioning local economy, even if you're just looking narrowly at the needs of the wealthy residents, needs affordable housing, unless your aim really is to completely seclude yourself from wider society (which might make sense if you're a Russian oligarch or if you just really hate other people, but I don't think most people are like that). So yes I do think people live together as communities that help everyone to have better lives, and yes that can be too idealistic ("let's create synergies, yeah") in some contexts, and sometimes it's just an excuse for cost cutting. But it can also definitely be a real measurable thing.

Ok but government is involved already (council tax, stamp duty, planning regulations, provision of waste collection, utilities infrastructure, etc etc). It’s not really about whether govt intervenes, it’s about closing loopholes and setting existing taxation policies in more sensible ways. If we had a housing policy that increased supply & occupancy rates in desirable locations, our GDP growth would be higher, and you’d still enjoy a great life making more money - and still be able to buy a holiday home. The problem is too many people believe in the “zero sum”, “no such thing as a free lunch” view of the economy which suggests every positive action by the govt must have an equally negative consequence somewhere else. But that just isn’t true. Society progresses and living standards collectively improve because the world isn’t a zero sum game.

Good post, but I fundamentally disagree with the last bit. The UK is looked on with puzzlement by countries where smarter housing policies have lifted living standards for everyone, without dragging down the most affluent. There’s no need for our approach to it - it gives people a sense of increasing wealth when they get on the ladder and watch their house go up in value, but it’s mostly an illusion (unless you reach the step of owning multiple properties, collectively worth the same or more than your current place of residence). You didn’t do well in life because of this country’s housing policy - probably in spite of it tbh.

Yes I understand the human psyche, but government’s job is to not just be a **** drug dealer helping people get high on stupid ideas, but to think about the wider economy. I’m not criticising your personal decision to buy a holiday home, or to factor in the tax implications. I’m saying the policies are flawed.

This is just an explanation of why property is a good investment for the investor. I’m talking about it being economically productive in the wider economy, ie having multiplier effects or spillover effects or whatever. And no, the *purchase* and *ownership* of that property through a tax efficient vehicle is not what generates the tourism revenue. If it’s an attractive place for tourists to visit then they can rent or stay in a hotel or drive down for the day, OR buy it in a slightly less tax efficient way that still generates money for the local economy. There’s no good argument at all for making holiday home ownership tax efficient in a country with a shortage of housing supply. It might make sense in rural parts of Italy where no Italians want to live. It doesn’t make much sense in Cornwall. The property would still be occupied in a higher tax environment (that’s why the prices keep surging, because demand is outstripping supply).

Absolutely, and I completely get that. The problem is that it has become self defeating, since most people spend the best years of their lives saving to buy property or paying down expensive mortgages, and not having the same level of disposable cash as many of our peers in other affluent countries. I believe we can have a dynamic, free market economy with relatively low taxes, whilst still disincentivising the purchase of property as a means of parking wealth. Wouldn’t you rather that money was flowing into startups or growth businesses that employ lots of people?

The purchase of the house is not what generates the tourism revenue. I agree these communities have naturally had to tilt towards tourism, and it’s unrealistic to think they will always have the same community when traditional industries & agriculture decline. But leaving big tax loopholes for speculative property investors vs homebuyers doesn’t really have the effect you describe, and the idea that all that money would just funnel out instead to foreign countries is based on what evidence? The point is the “opportunity cost” you outline isn’t really a cost. Property isn’t really a productive investment in the same way as investing in a business. Who gives a **** if some of that money goes on a villa in Cyprus.

I think I agree, but also wish the entire British addiction to property ownership (*especially* property as an investment) based on eternally rising house prices, could be tackled somehow. I think politicians are scared to do it because homeowners vote and, for the Tories, property portfolio owners fund their party. It’s a mess. What’s tragic is that our voting system helps to entrench a form of narrow “localism” which is really just protectionist Nimbyism, and even when the major parties want to take action, they get punished at the ballot box. I’m not really sure what a realistic solution is. We know conceptually what the solution is, but how you get the British electorate to vote for that solution over more than one electoral cycle is a massive headache. I think it all dates back to when Thatcher realised the short term electoral power of right to buy? Since then every govt has deliberately distorted the housing market in stupid ways to win votes. The Tories have definitely been worse, but the Blair/ Brown govts were hardly blameless, and I wonder how much appetite Starmer would have for fixing it properly.

I’m not sure it needs to be *that* much tax - just sufficiently high to encourage people to invest that money in more productive assets (shares, bonds, whatever) that actually contribute to the wider economy. We have a situation in this country where property is seen as a bulletproof investment, and lots of very wealthy (and not particularly wealthy!) people invest far too high a % of their personal wealth in it (beyond their own place of residence). You only have to look at how many YouTube / Instagram financial influencer types fixate on having a “property portfolio”. Combine that with general inequality and a failure to build housing, and it just keeps getting worse.

The White House immediately issued a clarification that there is no intention to send US troops in. It’s a bad slip of the tongue from him, you’re right, but think of all the things that could have gone wrong over the last couple of months… he’s got most of the big strategic decisions right. I’d much rather have him as “leader of the free world” right now than Trump, Macron, Johnson, Scholz, or any of the Democratic candidates he defeated in the primaries.

Judge him by his decisions, not his performance on a mic in front of an audience. We’re very lucky that he was President when this all kicked off. He has the right temperament IMO, even if he’s a rambling public speaker nowadays.

Yeah IMO it's these tax loopholes that need fixing, not the entire concept of having a holiday home.

Suspect it's even worse - disappeared down a rabbit hole of spiritualism and conspiracism in order to escape his addictions, and genuinely believes all this crap.

The rumour is that Kadyrov is actually keeping most of his best guys away from the front line precisely to avoid this, and they function more like a military police / secret police.

I meant across the board, including civilians. As you go from 1,000 deaths to 10,000 deaths to 100,000 deaths I think people lose the ability to really appreciate or empathise just how much worse each order of magnitude is. And don’t get me wrong, I love it when these reports come in of dead Russia. generals, mainly because I hope it damages the Russian war effort and gives the Ukrainians renewed confidence. Anyway this is a great thread:

The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi, but having said that, the lesson from Germany is that one day some of these words removed will be needed to rebuild Russia, if we ever want it to become a functioning state. Hard to stomach, but I think that’s how things will turn out - either that, or nuclear apocalypse. This really is a total mess, and we’re all becoming desensitised to death on an epic scale.

I'm similar, but this kind of cost of living crisis just isn't good for the wider economy, and will affect investments as well. The govt really needs to get the economy booming again, and especially for lower and middle earners who are the ones who spend most / all of their disposable income. (And obviously for non-financial reasons like health, education, quality of life, investment in public services, etc etc)

American volunteer fighter Tweeting from Ukraine.

The US massively outgunned Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, etc And those countries weren’t getting daily shipments of weapons and up-to-the-minute intel from NATO. Russia is not prepared for the type of war it has rolled into here. Maybe in parts of Ukraine (south east) but their chances of taking Kyiv without nuking it out of existence are close to zero at this point.

Finally got round to watching Apocalypto after someone mentioned it on VT If you ignore all the historical inaccuracies and treat it more like a Game of Thrones fantasy or a vivid dream sequence, it’s just a brilliant film. Insanely violent, amazing costumes and scenery, great acting, and keeps the adrenaline pumping the whole 2 hours It’s a ridiculous film that somehow makes you take it seriously