Comment on Half-a-million members sign up to new left-wing party founded in Britain

Davriellelouna@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• JasSmith@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Cap immigration at 2% a year. It’s very clear to me that immigration in recent decades has been far too high. It has undermined the labor market, the housing market, and it may undermine national cohesion.

  Honestly, any party which achieves only this will win the next four elections. 95% of the Kingdom wants lower immigration. I’ve never seen an issue this unifying in politics in my entire life. You can’t get 95% of the country to agree on anything. Except this.

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• echodot@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I agree with pretty much everything you say except the immigration thing.

  If you actually look at the statistics rather than listening to all the rhetoric you’ll realise that immigration into the UK really isn’t a problem. The main problem with the housing market isn’t immigrants who make up a tiny fraction of the people looking for a house, the main issue is that consecutive governments for years on end have not built enough houses.

  The reason for this is actually pretty simple, it doesn’t cost much more money to build a house that will sell for a million pounds than a house that will sell for £100,000, so contractors build loads of expensive homes because it’s more profitable. What the government needs to do is force a minimum number of affordable houses to be built per year. Make it so they have to build affordable homes

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  • twice_hatch@midwest.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    A land value tax would fix this

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    • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It wouldn’t though because rich people are rich. They can afford to be extravagant, they all moan about it but ultimately just consider it the cost of doing business.

      You would actually have to implement laws that directly instructed affordable homes to be constructed, trying to pussyfoot around the issue Will just result in it not working.

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      • Birch@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Just limit foreign investment in real estate, practically half of London is owned by russian, arab and chinese billionaires. Other countries don’t allow owning property if you don’t live there or tax the shit out of second and third homes.

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• Buckshot@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Agree with most of that. Immigration doesn’t need capping though. Firstly it’s not even 2% now, it’s not even 1%. Net migration in 2024 was 0.6%.

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• lordnikon@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  One big thing you missed was create a homestead housing tax system that taxes the hell out of you if you own a home you don’t live in. This incentivizes landlords to drop properties and for homeowners to purchase homes. It will crash the housing market but also Make a law that forbids home ownership to a corporate entity. To get the stockmarket out of home trading.

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