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Letters: Home owners have destroyed free market

Source: guardian.co.uk Politics

Nov 08, 2009

Summary

It is ironic that when Will Hutton (Comment) points out that the private sector cannot do everything, it is now regarded as controversial, almost counterintuitive.

The previous, postwar consensus centred on a mixed economy when the deficiencies of one sector were remedied by the other. But this did not survive the onslaught of James Callaghan on the Keynesian theories that put money in people's pockets and Thatcher's destruction of the unions that kept up such aggregate spending power.

The replacement wheeze was that all the political parties gave up trying to provide good, well-paid jobs, instead ensuring that home owners received enough lightly taxed capital gains in the value of their houses to compensate for job insecurity and repressive management practices, in the belief that people with big mortgages don't strike. This home-ownerist philosophy has become so general as to amount to a new consensus with the slogan: house price rises good, wage rises bad. But it has destroyed the capitalist free market.

DBC Reed

Northampton

An energy crisis is imminent
Unless w

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