Economist Gary Stevenson points out that the wealth of the very rich has grown so much that they are buying assets, such as property, forcing up prices for everybody else: Fewer people can afford to buy their own homes. Stevenson”s advocates taxing wealth to stop the rich getting too rich.
For the present, he avoids being to specific about the exact nature of a wealth tax. Here, I propose two specific solutions. First: taxing property and returning the proceeds equally to each of UK’s 52 million adults. Second: Taxing land to do the same. I have developed these with the help of the chatbot, Claude AI.
I append the six parts of my emails “Bring back the prefab” as a PDF. These were the result of using various AI chatbots. Here is a summary:
Part 1 told how the post-war prefabs were socially successful. They were designed with people in mind: one-storey homes with green space and private gardens. “Compared to later tower blocks or cramped terraced housing, prefabs gave people space and light, creating a more relaxed environment for community life”.
Part 2 pointed out that the construction of modern wooden prefabs caused a fraction of the emissions of greenhouse gases compared to houses built in a traditional fashion. It also pointed out that prefab construction is much cheaper.
Part 3 concerned neighbourliness, which was high for the socially uniform populations of prefab and council house estates. The social fabric of council housing rapidly worsened in the 1980s driven by policy changes & economic shifts.
This led to a policy of mixed-income developments, where social housing for low income residents was mixed with private housing for more affluent residents. Critics argued that it could be seen as a form of “soft” social engineering—a way to manage or disperse poverty without addressing its root causes.
Mixing low income housing with market priced housing, means mixing high car ownership residents with low car ownership ones.
Part 4 concluded that out of town developments that provide one, two (or even three) car parking spaces are not suitable for lower-income people with limited car use. Such developments also have very high carbon emissions.
Part 5 concluded that new towns are not an answer. They take decades to build, and have high embodied carbon. Estates of car-free modern (mostly wooden) prefabs (with solar roofs, heat pumps &tc) are a good start. They should be placed next to existing settlements to provide low carbon services for them.
Part 6 noted that a plot of agricultural land big enough for a house is valued at less than £1000 – but when planning permission is granted its value leaps to between £100,000 to £150,000 so a large part of the cost of a new house is created by planning permission. This accrues to the land owner. For a £300,000 house on the fringe of York, Copilot has estimated:
My 3 minute specch about the York Local Plan was met with silence – althoughsince then I have had indications that it was appreciated. I’m inferring that the opinion is that my views do not take into account political reality. I get that.
However, the Local Plan (as is) will continue the rush towards environmental destruction and increasing inequality. Reversing these trends will require a break with current “political reality”.
Here are a few extra notes followed by a transcript of what I said to the Council.
New towns are a cumbersome way of solving the housing crisis.
Links to my notes from then are at the end of this post
Cost of housing in York
A new house in York costs almost £200K more than a similar one in Middlesbrough.
A plot of land in the York area big enough for a house costs less than £1K at agricultural prices. It becomes worth the best part of £200K when planning permission for a house is granted.
House price rises in York have risen 70% over the past 20 years. That’s roughly the same as UK inflation (mean 2.7% a year). However houseowners, who took out mortgages will have benefited in real terms because the value of this debt will have decreased in real terms by 40%.
Housing affordability estimates are calculated by dividing house prices by average annual earnings to create a ratio, The “affordability ratio”. It was 6.22 in 2003 rising to 8.8 in 2023 – but was 3.71 in 1997. A large increase occurred in 2001 to 2003.
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