In a society with not enough houses for everyone, it's easy to see how the government might want to incentivise people sharing houses.
On Radio 4 the other week there was a discussion about people who had stopped cohabiting because the benifits for living singly (one assumes single parent benefit, as well as some council tax stuff?) were worth about 5K to them, which was a sizable proportion of their total income. Tax shouldn't drive people to not live with their kid when they want to...
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david jones (from livejournal.com)2007-07-26 02:11 pm (UTC)(link)
On your last point I also think that tax shouldn't drive people to not live with their kid when they want to.
In a society with not enough houses for everyone, isn't there already an incentive for people to share, without government involvement? Namely, _there aren't enough houses_. Of course what actually happens in societies where you can more or less freely buy and sell land is that all the houses end up owned by an elite. *sigh*. I'm being devil's advocate. Of course there might be good reasons to encourage people to cohabit, but I don't think that cohabiting in itself should confer a tax advantage.
69% of houses are owner-occupied (http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/facts/index43.aspx?ComponentId=12642&SourcePageId=19659)
Cohabiting, like saving, is heavily discouraged by the benefit system.
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david jones (from livejournal.com)2007-07-26 04:00 pm (UTC)(link)
That 69% figure neither supports nor refutes my claim. What we need to know is what proportion of the population is housed by that 69% of the housing stock and how that varies with demographic.
No, your original claim was about houses: that houses get owned by an elite. A majority of houses are owned by the people living in them. The proportion of people housed thereby wasn't in your original claim.
However, you can make some inferences from some of the other figures in the linked document, if you add some other demographic info and do Bayes on it. For example, "80 per cent of households comprising a couple with dependent children" ... "80 per cent of Indians and 70 per cent of White British people and those of Pakistani origin" ... "81 per cent of pensioner households" (were owner-occupiers). That isn't really consistent which the characterisation of home-ownership as restricted to the "elite".
Using http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_social/Social_Trends34/Social_Trends34.pdf p26 I get a figure that roughly 50% of households consist of couples, and p153 I get the figure that roughly 80% of couple householders (children or otherwise) are owner occupiers, so at least 40% of houses are owned by a couple who are living in that house.
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david jones (from livejournal.com)2007-07-26 04:57 pm (UTC)(link)
If 69% of the housing stock was owner-occupied by the top 2% of the population by income, then that would constitute ownership by an elite would it not?
Of course, I don't believe that there are sufficiently few houses in britain that 69% of them could be occupied by an elite, but the 69% figure alone does not give me enough information to infer that. As you point out you need more information and when that information is presented in an annoying way you have to do Bayes on it.
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On Radio 4 the other week there was a discussion about people who had stopped cohabiting because the benifits for living singly (one assumes single parent benefit, as well as some council tax stuff?) were worth about 5K to them, which was a sizable proportion of their total income. Tax shouldn't drive people to not live with their kid when they want to...
no subject
In a society with not enough houses for everyone, isn't there already an incentive for people to share, without government involvement? Namely, _there aren't enough houses_. Of course what actually happens in societies where you can more or less freely buy and sell land is that all the houses end up owned by an elite. *sigh*. I'm being devil's advocate. Of course there might be good reasons to encourage people to cohabit, but I don't think that cohabiting in itself should confer a tax advantage.
no subject
69% of houses are owner-occupied (http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/facts/index43.aspx?ComponentId=12642&SourcePageId=19659)
Cohabiting, like saving, is heavily discouraged by the benefit system.
no subject
no subject
However, you can make some inferences from some of the other figures in the linked document, if you add some other demographic info and do Bayes on it. For example, "80 per cent of households comprising a couple with dependent children" ... "80 per cent of Indians and 70 per cent of White British people and those of Pakistani origin" ... "81 per cent of pensioner households" (were owner-occupiers). That isn't really consistent which the characterisation of home-ownership as restricted to the "elite".
no subject
no subject
Of course, I don't believe that there are sufficiently few houses in britain that 69% of them could be occupied by an elite, but the 69% figure alone does not give me enough information to infer that. As you point out you need more information and when that information is presented in an annoying way you have to do Bayes on it.