Tuesday 16 June 2009

NIMBY of the week

Most of the comments following an article in yesterday's Times headed "Train firms want to reopen lines axed by Richard Beeching 40 years ago" are very positive, but then there's this:

If you read the article carefully you notice that the train companies propose that all of this would be paid for by new housing and park and rides along these routes. Local people should consider the consequences BEFORE they start cheering for this. david james, graz, austria.

What a selfish piece of shit, frankly.

What sort of illness is it that makes people value their homes above their fellow men or even themselves? Why should 'everybody else' be excluded from the benefit of any sort of new third-party investment?

Remember: your home is not, and never will be, your main asset - the main asset of any couple is the seventy or eighty years of work that they put in over their lifetime, not the home you end up with that might be worth three times one year's average joint income.

Jesus wept.

11 comments:

Lola said...

Try explaining the truism of your last paragraph to the average punter year after year after year. Sometimes I wonder why I do it.

JuliaM said...

Particularly given the commenter is in Austria...!

Mark Wadsworth said...

Julia, agreed, that was icing on the Kuchen.

dearieme said...

3 times? More like 10 times in our case, at the peak. Perhaps 3 at the trough?

Mark Wadsworth said...

D, I mean an average couple in an average house, expressed as a multiple of joint income.

Lester Taylor said...

"Remember: your home is not, and never will be, your main asset - the main asset of any couple is the seventy or eighty years of work that they put in over their lifetime, not the home you end up with that might be worth three times one year's average joint income."..........Well said Mark....I'm still thinking it will be more like 2 and a half times a single income....

TC

Anonymous said...

I suppose you are using the word asset in some technical way because from the outside it has the fairy overtones as when people say you can't buy happiness.
To most/ many people an asset is what you got - no more no less.

Anonymous said...

I don't get why it's selfish. Having the rails paid for by higher house prices, how is not wanting to pay more than what a house is worth selfishness?

Mark Wadsworth said...

Anon 2, these NIMBYs want a third party to invest loads of money to build a railway (to boost the value of their own home) but don't want to share it with anybody else and they certainly don't want to pay for it (either directly through Land Value Tax or indirectly by allowing new homes to be built which might dilute the value of their homes slightly).

Don't forget that transport links are one of the main drivers of property values. Conversely, if you are a rail company, you need a certain population density around your stations to get enough passengers to make a profit.

Plus, nobody's being forced to pay more than a house is worth. Where did I say that?

Anonymous said...

I am struggling a bit to work out how your main asset is not the tangible thing you end up with, but rather the effort you had to put in to get it, which effort is now spent and gone.

So your view is, if you buy a piece of property, the asset you get is not the property, but the money you spent on it, which you don't have any more and now can't do anything with.

Huh?

Things work differently in Wadsworld, that's clear.

Mark Wadsworth said...

In Wadsworld we compare the number "70" with the number "5".

"70" being the expected number of years' income an average couple hopes to earn over a lifetime. That is a source of income, hence an asset (how much gets robbed in tax and how much you spend are different topics). Somebody with good qualifications and skills has a bigger asset than somebody without qualifications or experience, but let's stick with 70 for now.

"5" is the number of average years' income their home will be worth at the end of it all.

"70" is clearly bigger than "5", end of discussion.

Or what would you say is your bigger asset - your lifetime earning potential or your car? On your logic, it's your car, even if it's only worth £500.