Benefits system
Simon Heffer has a column in today's Telegraph discussing the flaws of the UK benefits system.
It raises some important questions. Unfortunately, it also tries to sell a certain political party in the process, which devalues the issue discussed to just mere politics.
But here's one:
The report [on reform of the benefits system, published today by the Centre for Social Justice] is laced with models and case studies. “Why”, it asks, “do those most in need of encouragement have the greatest penalty”? A young man working 25 hours a week in a part-time job will, they show, lose 84 per cent of his new wage in taxation and loss of benefits. A lone parent would lose 61 per cent. A low-income couple who choose to live together – such as for the purpose of bringing up children – will lose £1,350 a year by doing so. So the benefits system, as we currently have it, has failed. It keeps people from looking for work, because their marginal gain is frankly not worth it; and it institutionalises the breakdown of society, not just by removing incentives for individuals to be productive, but by encouraging that underclass of single parents that sociological surveys since Charles Murray have shown lead to poverty, criminality and underachievement by their children.
I often wonder the same.
Public spending in graphics
This is quite possibly the best illustration of how tax money is being spent. I wonder if they have considered putting it up somewhere in Downing Street so they can see where there is some fat.
Interestingly this government spends more on "TV Licenses for over 75s" than for "Promoting Business".
It also spends more on housing and "disability" benefits, than for schools.
Britain is sleepwalking towards a decade of economic misery
Just found this very interesting critique on the well publicised "economic recovery".
In fact, I have been wondering about the recent turn of the market and how it may move from September for some time. Throughout Europe and the US, stock markets are up, consumer confidence is up, and property prices are turning. Most analysts are now talking of an economic recovery.
However, looking at fundamental issues, all one can see is indebted countries, indebted citizens, and no real evidence around of any meaningful production apart from services to be consumed within the country itself.
No one can really tell me what Europe and the US is planning to sell as a collective "Western World" to buy whatever is being imported from the Far East and Africa.
It won't be banking services, that's for sure.
It feels like the Greek model of development all over again. An economy that is constantly in deficit, with any production really only serving internal consumption, served by a deluded consumer base which is confident for no apparent reason.
It can't be sustainable. The question is just how quickly people will realise. It took years last time, and the make believe seems to have returned pretty quickly.
House Prices (2)
Recently I posted a graph of UK house prices, commenting that something seemed to be changing in the UK housing market.
More recent figures, such as this graph, show that indeed something is changing. The question now is if this will be sustainable.
A lot will depend I think on GDP and unemployment figures in weeks and months to come. If people believe the worst is over, then this will mean some price stability or even growth...
The BBC Box
I've been following the BBC Box for some time now and thought I'd post about it here.
Apparently, the BBC has painted a container with its branding and fitted it with a GPS tracker, mapping its route over an entire year and talking about global trade.
This started at a time when global trade was booming and the theme was how the box travelled full from Asia and empty back to it.
Things are taking their toll over time though, and the global recession hit (perhaps as a result of this trend).
The box has been left empty in a yard since April as the haulage company has no shipping orders to fulfill. The recession has reduced world trade significantly in recent months, worryingly so as the collapse in world trade following the 1929 crash brought about the depression that ensued.
Pay back time
It's funny how when people were borrowing endlessly, nobody was worried. Mortgage equity withdrawal has been increasing for years before the bubble burst. Few analysts were worried about this - it was a new era when money would be forever cheap and plenty.
Now, customers don't like the idea of paying 7% interest when the Bank of England has dropped its own rates to record lows, and have started the painful process of clearing the debt. If we are to return to stability, this may take years. Unless of course inflation kicks in to reduce the value of this debt. Paying back the debt means less spending, and of course this has the analysts disturbed about the effects on the real economy.
The graph from The T elegraph tells part of the story.
This would suggest things may soon be back to equilibrium.
What it doesn't say is that these positive bars in 2007 stretch back almost a decade (from The Economics Blog):
Inflation
Not too long ago I was writing about deflation hitting the UK economy.
Well, I may have been too quick. More recent reports and the markets seem to now expect inflation - and I mean serious inflation.
A businessman I was discussing with yesterday was worried. He noted that all governments had printed money too fast to get us out of the recession, and suggested this had happenned more than publicised. If all this money is around, it will surely lose its value.
This was a businessman from overseas, who was keen to buy real assets with his cash and was shopping around for land, property, gold and oil. And his only worry was that commodities and property are sold in local currency which means they are exposed as well.
The problem of course is not monetary. When you have a country that doesn't produce anything, printing money will just be translated into inflation in the long term. This is known. The challenge here is for all this trickery to create some business growth quickly before markets realise that cooking the numbers doesn't make a country stronger financially.
I wonder if Adam Smith (featuring on the £20 notes) had thought about all this government intervention in his free market theories. I somehow doubt so.
The trillion dollar question
A very interesting article in the Telegraph talks about the shift in economic muscle taking place between China and America in the current economic crisis.
To simplify the story, think of an unhappy marriage in which one partner does all the saving, while the other does all the spending. (We all know at least one couple like that.) But then the partner with the retail therapy habit maxes out on his/her credit cards. At the same time, the parsimonious partner finds her/his job under threat. What previously was a stable relationship is suddenly on the rocks.
To me, it's not a question. People who work hard and save money always do better than fly-by-nights who borrow, spend, and then borrow more. The same will apply for nations. If an American bank predicts China's GDP to overtake America's by 2027, my bet is that we won't have to wait that long.
House prices
The BBC is showing us the above graph.
It definately looks like the last two months are a bit better than the ones before them.
This could go three ways... A long slide with a little pause in the middle; a V shaped; or a U shaped graph.
Either way, things are changing in the marketplace and it's now the time to start looking closely again.
Fractional Summit
I went to the Fractional Summit last week, and it's the first event I've been to in a while that has exceeded my expectations.
I noticed many new faces, both developers and suppliers coming into the industry. In a time when most markets are looking inwards, it was great to see people actually making plans to enter or expand their operations in the fractional market.
Very excited also to see Barclays Wealth give a talk - an indication that some pretty big names have fractional in their radar.
All in all a very positive couple of days. I am really looking forward to growth in the fractional market, and hope next year will be even more successful.