“TV manufacturers won’t over-produce to the point that the price of TVs falls'

They kinda do though

I was on a discussion on NextDoor recently in which someone was complaining about how Starmer was going to make it easier to build on the 'Green Belt around Southampton', but of course there is no such thing... there are green fields around Southampton, but no Green Belt!

Broke: 'there are more vacant homes than homeless people'

Choke: 'there are more vacant bedrooms than homeless people'

Woke: 'there's more vacant land than homeless people would need'

Bespoke: 'there's near-infinite vacant airspace but it's illegal to build into'

Back in the 1970s, feminists anthropologists often claimed that small-scale societies were more gender equal, as there were weaker restrictions on sexuality.

Actually, they had extremely high violence, often involving capture & gang rape of women.

- graph from Steven Pinker

I think people maybe throw the term 'unaffordable' around a bit too easily? I was completing a yougov survey, and most people (so far) responded to say that fuel costs were 'unaffordable', but most also said that they have never considered travelling by something other than car?

We don’t need to build more homes because some people have spare bedrooms.

Big insights from one of the UK’s leading universities.

This is excellent. I'm a floating voter and I'll vote for any party that recognises that the planning system is the biggest barrier to growth and that the so-called 'Green-Belt' is a big part of that.

Something just distinctly tragic about midwit history.

The $45tn figure is from a marxist economist who has simply applied a perpetual 5% compound on the real transfer of £1bn. To believe her figure to be true you would need to believe last year Britain stole $3.2tn from India.

The idea of redesignating land as 'grey belt' seems a good one: the big problem with developing 'green belt' land is mostly branding: people hear 'green belt' and they mix it up with 'green field' land.
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi…

Online tankies long for the days when they could sic the Stasi on people, but thankfully now they’re just limited to impotently complaining into the void

Matt Gaetz's constituents produce Javelins.

Jim Jordan's constituents produce Strykers.

Anna Luna's constituents produce HIMARS.

Scott Perry's constituents produce Bradleys.

Yet all four oppose the Ukraine aid that funded those projects — and they're not the only ones.

...However, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) research where this 50% stat apparently comes from also stresses that the majority of those with depression, bad nerves or anxiety reported it as a *secondary* health condition rather than their main one...

blog.ons.gov.uk/2023/07/26/too…

An important point about the PM's speech on the UK's 'sick note culture'.

He stated: 'Of those who are economically inactive, fully half say they have depression or anxiety.'...gov.uk/government/spe…

Everyone’s dunking on this, but it’s admirably honest that the alternative to building more is no one having a guest bedroom, a home office, or space for kids they haven’t had yet. And that permanent flat sharing into middle age will be the norm.

Refreshingly straightforward!

Who is ready for Owen Jones/@Guardian to be forced into a humiliating retraction over his latest piece? One that exposes how lazy he is as a 'journalist', who is so committed to his own ideological bubble that he has published an egregious error.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Bold call from Owen Jones to abandon NATO allies, abrogate Article 5 & leave Estonia vulnerable to Russian attack. “Britain should pare back defence spending so it means just that: defence, or protection from invasion…” theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

If you like democracy, you should like capitalism.

Lemon Socialism - where the private sector squeeze out profits and the sate picks up the rinds - really is the worst kind of socialism.

The point of investors is to take risks and if the state always insulates them from that risk then really what was the point?

Let it die.

Economists (not historians!) need to debunk wild claims like this with boring facts like:

1) The vast majority of the world’s wealth was created after decolonisation

2) the main driver of long term productivity growth over the last millennium is the advancement of science

In Sweden 50% of people own or have access to a summer house. Here almost no one does. But holiday homes are great - good for council finances, great for seaside communities and fabulous for families. Change planning. Build lots more…. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…