The disastrous Guardian is at it again with a whole series on how negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions “screwed Millennials” out of housing.
This is true, and the 1990s halving of the capital gains tax should be reversed. Scrap negative gearing too!
But this still won’t fix housing and will worsen it in one crucial respect.
Supply-side tax reform is only one-half of the equation. There is also the demand side.
As usual, The Guardian’s Millennials never mention mass immigration, which has grown housing demand by eight million people since the turn of the century.
Nor do The Guardian’s Millennials mention the recent unprecedented surge in mass immigration—to 700k per annum from a historical average of 100k.
For them, somehow, 1990s changes to tax are also responsible for the last two years of rental shock, which is throwing Millennials, low-income families and the mentally ill onto the streets:
Sadly for Millennials, the Millennials that have occupied The Guardian (and wider media) refuse to mention immigration at all, even as a cause of…well…immigration!
By ignoring the demand side, iMSM Millennials threaten to make it all a lot worse.
If they succeed in reforming tax changes, slowing house price gains, and triggering a minor correction, they will derail any supply-side construction response to skyrocketing rents.
You can’t fix housing (or wages, or living standards, or the environment) without reference to the relentless demand from mass immigration, and pretending otherwise means that, today, it is Millennials who are screwing Millennials.
For more of the same stupidity, see Max Chandler-Mather and an utterly pointless housing debate on Q&A that never mentioned population!
