This is true about ten percent of the perperties in the UK are empty. The government is using the property market to keep the poor poor. The thing that pisses me off is that it is done at the expense of people living on the street. The government makes no effort to resolve it. They just act on what the majority of voters want. This makes me think that the majority of people here as horrible and makes me want to leave.
No the arguments I have put forward in the thread earlier prevented you from being able to contest me. What you claim is the free market is not the free market it is intervention from the central bank and gvoernment to benefit one group of people that is not a free market. If you were in discussion with Mises or the ASI they would agree with me and they are the true free market proponents. I completely understand how the free market should work. No intervention no manipulation etc. I just don't think it is and perhaps shouldn't be either. What I am really trying to address in the article is the inability for the people who owe money to pay it back and suggest a method of enabling that. If the debts are not paid then savings will be lost. There is a cycle of debt and pay that has become unbalanced. The people who lent the money will be as damaged as the people who owe it if they cannot make the payments. What you claim as a free market would not be designed. There is a logic flaw in your argument. That is the point there is no design to it. Adam Smith wrote about the invisible hand that made things improve without people appreciating it. Producing goods for their own purpose would create more goods and any intervention or tax or stimulus or interest rate alteration would prevent that natural occurence. Your comment above shows you do not know how the free market works because it is not designed. As soon as any central plan comes into operation it is not free market. I am contesting the viability of the current system as it is self destroying. I merely present a possible solution to that problem.
What exactly are you contesting then? What you are claiming is free market is not. One group of people were allowed to buy property at a lower cost to others because of central bank intervention. How is that free market. Also you clearly do not understand what a free market is if it is as you claim 'designed' if there was one statement you could make that would be the opposite of the definition of a free market it would be. 'how the free market is designed to work.' What you claim is the free market system is really a centrally planned system that benefits one group of people. If anyone has demonstrated a lack of understanding of the free market it is you.
I think you're wrong about that. The renter has no obligation but to pay the rent or be evicted. The owner/landlord has responsibility to the bank... regardless of whether the property is rented or not.
Of course, "they can lower taxes"... they would also need to cut spending and endure the screams an hollers of those parasites whose benefits are cut to keep things in balance. THAT is what they are "unable to do"... not that they can't DO it.. just that they suffer at the polls when they do. It's the same old story. The government gives certain people free stuff, and all they do is bitch that they didn't get more and sooner. The solution is to give NOBODY NOTHING... require people earn their own way. Government "support" should be limited to "life sustaining" levels, not buying a livable lifestyle for layabouts in exchange for their vote.
The renter is the one who has to pay the rent or as you say be homeless not really a choice. In any event the landlord then has to take the responsiblity of the loss of the property when the renter can't pay the mortgage, which is the argument in the article.