ProfPaz

TANSTAAFL

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@DaleVince I don't argue much about the causes, but I do argue about what should be done, namely: maximise growth to get people as rich as possible as quickly as possible so they can better cope with whatever problems arise, i.e. the opposite of what the left would do.

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@ian99savage @FawdonMag @coldwarsteve @RupertLowe10 When we do it to other people it's good for us. When they do it to us it's bad for us. Perfectly consistent, see? 😜

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@59Shazza @RupertLowe10 @JacobCollierMP As far as I can see he wants to deport foreigners who don't pay taxes or commit crimes.

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@RobinsonTo15721 @JimmyEnough @RupertLowe10 Seems like you're the one who is not in agreement with Rupert. The racist, antisemitic Restore followers make no sense. The problem we have is becoming the world's welfare service, nothing more. The party's actual policies make this clear, rather than what you hallucinated.

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@DTDavisPhD @perrymetzger Hoarding isn't the problem, planning is.

[Perry E. Metzger @perrymetzger]

Why subsidizing demand is stupid:

Imagine there are five chairs, and ten people. A chair costs $100, and five people can't afford chairs and stand. If we give every person who manages to buy a chair an extra $500 to buy chairs, there are still five chairs and ten people, but now a chair costs $600, and five people can't afford chairs and stand.

This is the problem we have in the housing market. No amount of subsidizing demand fixes the problem of having fewer houses than families who want to buy houses. If you want to fix the problem, you let people build more houses.

If you don't want to let people build more houses, nothing you do will fix the fact that there are fewer houses than families who want to buy houses. The price of houses will rise until there are just barely enough houses for the people that can still afford them. If there are 100 families and only 90 houses, then the price will rise until only the top 90 bidders can pay for houses; the market cannot supply ten extra houses that simply don't exist. The price will necessarily be bid up by the people who want the scarce resource they can't do without. If no one can build more houses, then the other ten families have to move away or live in their parents' basement or something.

If you give everyone more money but still won't let anyone build, all that happens is the price will go up but the same people still will have to do without. If you only have 90 houses, the price of the houses will just rise again until only the 90 families with the most money can afford them; it is impossible to supply 100 houses if there are only 90 houses, so no matter how much you subsidize demand, only 90 families will be able to afford houses because there are only 90 to buy.

If you let people build enough houses, you won't have to worry about people being able to pay for them any more. The prices will fall until the cost of housing exceeds the cost of building houses by just enough to make it worthwhile for people to be in the business. That's how most markets from cars to computers to vacuum cleaners work. Houses aren't special except in so far as the government keeps people from building enough of them.

This also happens in health care btw. The government artificially restricts the supply, and you cannot magically create more doctors and hospitals by subsidizing demand. The subsidies on demand only keep the price rising year after year. If you want the price of a good to fall, you have to allow people to provide enough of the good for demand to clear.

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

I'm arguing that ultra wealthy people would be better off investing in things that gain value by becoming more productive, than by buying assets that sit there and do nothing. And I'm assuming they know that and mostly act in their own interests. Asset capture is not optimum strat

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@CityofVices @LoftusSteve A house would only increase in £ value if £ inflates or demand increases without being met by supply. Perhaps someone is restricting housing supply 🤔. Land can only increase in value if it becomes more productive.

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@1358531 @perrymetzger @pawelwargan So communism didn't beat us to space, then.

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@CityofVices @LoftusSteve If assets go up in price without being more productive that's a money supply issue.

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@TheHarrisSultan @RestoreMemes_ @RupertLowe10 @PaulineHansonOz I really don't understand the anti-Isreal Lowe supporters. Israelis are some of the few people in the middle east who don't want to kill us all!

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@snipeder @RupertLowe10 @PaulineHansonOz Is she an Israeli stooge or does she just think the one foothold of western civilization in the middle east is worth defending?

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@CityofVices @LoftusSteve They're not sitting on piles of money, those assets are profit-making companies. A few yachts aren't doing anyone any harm.

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@RedDyke69 @jk_rowling @nats_tired The poor pay too much tax as well. The trouble with demonising as "rich bastards" people who attain wealth by creating it, is that without them you lose what they would have created (e.g. Nordhaus reckons only a few percent of created wealth goes to the entrepreneur)

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@DavidBillinge @DavidDavisMP Your state-approved age-checking VPN service can see all your traffic and knows who you are, and is state-approved.

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@CityofVices @LoftusSteve They don't have to give two shits about me. But it's helpful if they channel their capital into improvements to the means of production, so that I get to both enjoy the new stuff and get employed working on some it. If they all sod off I'm left with my own piss-poor sales skills.

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@RedDyke69 @jk_rowling @nats_tired When you say "the poor - who have made them rich by buying their books" you imply that repayment is owed in the form of taxes. It isn't.

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@CityofVices @LoftusSteve Wealth taxes will reduce investment, which will reduce growth, which will make us poorer and cause excess death.

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@LoftusSteve This is a great antidote, explaining the down-sides of various types of wealth tax: https://t.co/XQxDCd4Zjv

[ProfPaz @ProfBernardPaz]

@JasonDigital @LoftusSteve He represents people who want to blame the productive rich people but not the rich people with political power.