Moodyman
Legendary Member
Whilst perusing some cycling items on eBay, I noticed the seller also listed a Heineken can for £400,000.
Being inquisitive, I read the description and could feel their despair and that of others in their position. I’m in the privileged position that I have a home with a mortgage, but I don’t know how the next generation will get onto the housing ladder.
I might add that the ‘seller’ is a cyclist and posts on another forum.
Here’s the ad:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/40367815...9DDRL6bTOS&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Here is the description:
Congratulations, today is your day. You have found the sale listing of my 'lucky can'. A used and empty can of Heineken 0.0.
This is a story (not a listing) about luck, greed, and capitalism. The good, the bad and the ugly state of housing in the UK compiled from research and data from reputable sources, as well as drawing on themes from expert opinion pieces.
One day on my travels, I was hit by a car and, thankfully, I was not severely injured. This 'lucky can' was in my backpack at the time and may, or may not, have helped save me from injury. You can see from the pictures that the impact of the collision crushed part of the can... the 'lucky can' and I survived! By buying this item, you could become the sole owner of this epic piece of luck.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. Less than 1 in 3 of my age group (33-44) now own a property via a mortgage. And as a ‘generation rent’, I am not one of those lucky few…
And the question I ask myself is why? Because so far I’ve been told I haven’t worked hard enough, I’m lazy, I’m not educated enough, I should have gone to University sooner, later, longer, shorter, not at all, I made the wrong investments, I should have moved, never have moved, worked as this, worked as that, made the wrong career choices, work in the wrong industry, I’m not manifesting hard enough, married the wrong person, shouldn’t have married at all and so on and so forth. So I decided to do some research to try and answer the question for myself.
Thanks to the marketisation of 'homes', through the miracle of competition, supply and demand have met to discover the true price of a commodity. For the past decade, a combination of deliberate government policies, rock bottom interest rates and £895bn of quantitative easing have helped propel house prices to record highs. Poor regulation of the rental sector, lack of reform in the planning sector, the mass selling off of social housing, record low house building numbers for 30+ years, speculation on land and vast amounts of hedge fund investment, lack of progressive taxation on assets and wealth as opposed to income, are to name but a few. Thus creating the perfect systemic storm.
The price of this can is set at approx. the average property price in the local area upon which I live (at time of writing), excluding ebay fees and costs involved with purchasing a property. Thus with a 10 percent deposit of approx. £39,727+, someone would need to earn £78,000+ a year, or more than twice the median full-time UK salary of about £31,000 to afford a mortgage.
Average monthly rents hit £2,500 in London and £1,190 for rest of UK in August ‘23.
Locally, renting a room now costs approx. £500-£800+ per calendar month (or £6000-£9600 per year), often excluding bills. Renting a 1-2 bed property costs approx. £1200-£1800+ per calendar month (or £14,400-£21,600 per year), excluding bills.
Market rents across the UK increased by nearly 12% between the second quarter of 2021 and the same period of 2022 – equating to an extra £119 a month on average, or £1,428 a year. Private rental prices paid by tenants in the UK rose by 5.0% in the 12 months to May 2023. The ONS now considers rents in 48 council areas unaffordable when compared with local average wages. The longest waiting time for social housing is now estimated to be up to 50 years.
House prices have increased by approx 1010% since 1980, and that's around 24 times the rate at which annual salaries have increased. House prices have even risen every month during 2021 and UK average house prices increased by 13.6% over the year to August 2022 or up to £33,000 in cash terms. The average UK salary at the start of 2022 is estimated to be £24,600. Prof Danny Dorling explains that had house prices only risen in line with inflation, over the past 70 years, the average home in 2022 would have cost £63,300. His research details how money is syphoned from the less well off to the already wealthy, when the former pay excessive rents, and then when they buy an overpriced house, and even when they keep up with their large mortgage payments.
The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow.
Capitalism's trope is that hard work yields rewards… a mantra continually pedalled by our current and successive governments. Yet ONS, IMF and IFS studies are showing more and more that work and education no longer pays off as well as the luck of the family you are born into. Social mobility in the UK is at its worst in over 50 years, and the wealth of your parents and family will be one of the greatest determinants of your own wealth and “success”. Income is taxed at about twice the rate of asset wealth. So it’s a bit like starting a game of monopoly but the poorest of you start with 230 times less money at the beginning and some of you already have houses on the board.
So people are young and talented, work full time for most of their adult lives, never get into debt, live frugally, have excellent credit ratings, have savings, have professional qualifications, and did everything the political parties and their parents and grandparents told them to do… to get 'on the ladder' and yet find themselves without a toe in their first front door. The Institute of fiscal studies tells us that wealth has grown so rapidly, compared with earnings from work, since the 2008 financial crisis, driven by a surge in house prices, that young people can no longer rely on hard work to improve their living standards as they age. You can barely afford to rent, you can't afford to buy, you can't afford to save to even keep up with the rate of price rises...
When the city you live in makes it into the top 5 cities in the world to invest in property...it then quickly becomes the most unaffordable city in the UK. Homes become houses, houses become property, property becomes capital and capital becomes wealth. And accumulating wealth will always involve luck. And neither how much you educate yourself or the hours you put in, the systemic structures around you will keep you in your place.
So the answer to the question of why… is nothing… I have done nothing wrong, except being born in the wrong place, at the wrong time, into the wrong system, with an ideology that my hard work will pay off… as I slowly approach middle age I realise that I have an excellent track record of paying off mortgages… except they were always someone else's… and that my hard work of earnings and taxes has gone into sustaining this system of depravity.
Thus I am selling my luck for the chance to have somewhere to call home. Because A person needs a little place. Small as it may be. Of which he can say, "This is mine, here I live, here I love, here I find my rest. This is my land, this is my home".
Being inquisitive, I read the description and could feel their despair and that of others in their position. I’m in the privileged position that I have a home with a mortgage, but I don’t know how the next generation will get onto the housing ladder.
I might add that the ‘seller’ is a cyclist and posts on another forum.
Here’s the ad:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/40367815...9DDRL6bTOS&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Here is the description:
Congratulations, today is your day. You have found the sale listing of my 'lucky can'. A used and empty can of Heineken 0.0.
This is a story (not a listing) about luck, greed, and capitalism. The good, the bad and the ugly state of housing in the UK compiled from research and data from reputable sources, as well as drawing on themes from expert opinion pieces.
One day on my travels, I was hit by a car and, thankfully, I was not severely injured. This 'lucky can' was in my backpack at the time and may, or may not, have helped save me from injury. You can see from the pictures that the impact of the collision crushed part of the can... the 'lucky can' and I survived! By buying this item, you could become the sole owner of this epic piece of luck.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. Less than 1 in 3 of my age group (33-44) now own a property via a mortgage. And as a ‘generation rent’, I am not one of those lucky few…
And the question I ask myself is why? Because so far I’ve been told I haven’t worked hard enough, I’m lazy, I’m not educated enough, I should have gone to University sooner, later, longer, shorter, not at all, I made the wrong investments, I should have moved, never have moved, worked as this, worked as that, made the wrong career choices, work in the wrong industry, I’m not manifesting hard enough, married the wrong person, shouldn’t have married at all and so on and so forth. So I decided to do some research to try and answer the question for myself.
Thanks to the marketisation of 'homes', through the miracle of competition, supply and demand have met to discover the true price of a commodity. For the past decade, a combination of deliberate government policies, rock bottom interest rates and £895bn of quantitative easing have helped propel house prices to record highs. Poor regulation of the rental sector, lack of reform in the planning sector, the mass selling off of social housing, record low house building numbers for 30+ years, speculation on land and vast amounts of hedge fund investment, lack of progressive taxation on assets and wealth as opposed to income, are to name but a few. Thus creating the perfect systemic storm.
The price of this can is set at approx. the average property price in the local area upon which I live (at time of writing), excluding ebay fees and costs involved with purchasing a property. Thus with a 10 percent deposit of approx. £39,727+, someone would need to earn £78,000+ a year, or more than twice the median full-time UK salary of about £31,000 to afford a mortgage.
Average monthly rents hit £2,500 in London and £1,190 for rest of UK in August ‘23.
Locally, renting a room now costs approx. £500-£800+ per calendar month (or £6000-£9600 per year), often excluding bills. Renting a 1-2 bed property costs approx. £1200-£1800+ per calendar month (or £14,400-£21,600 per year), excluding bills.
Market rents across the UK increased by nearly 12% between the second quarter of 2021 and the same period of 2022 – equating to an extra £119 a month on average, or £1,428 a year. Private rental prices paid by tenants in the UK rose by 5.0% in the 12 months to May 2023. The ONS now considers rents in 48 council areas unaffordable when compared with local average wages. The longest waiting time for social housing is now estimated to be up to 50 years.
House prices have increased by approx 1010% since 1980, and that's around 24 times the rate at which annual salaries have increased. House prices have even risen every month during 2021 and UK average house prices increased by 13.6% over the year to August 2022 or up to £33,000 in cash terms. The average UK salary at the start of 2022 is estimated to be £24,600. Prof Danny Dorling explains that had house prices only risen in line with inflation, over the past 70 years, the average home in 2022 would have cost £63,300. His research details how money is syphoned from the less well off to the already wealthy, when the former pay excessive rents, and then when they buy an overpriced house, and even when they keep up with their large mortgage payments.
The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow.
Capitalism's trope is that hard work yields rewards… a mantra continually pedalled by our current and successive governments. Yet ONS, IMF and IFS studies are showing more and more that work and education no longer pays off as well as the luck of the family you are born into. Social mobility in the UK is at its worst in over 50 years, and the wealth of your parents and family will be one of the greatest determinants of your own wealth and “success”. Income is taxed at about twice the rate of asset wealth. So it’s a bit like starting a game of monopoly but the poorest of you start with 230 times less money at the beginning and some of you already have houses on the board.
So people are young and talented, work full time for most of their adult lives, never get into debt, live frugally, have excellent credit ratings, have savings, have professional qualifications, and did everything the political parties and their parents and grandparents told them to do… to get 'on the ladder' and yet find themselves without a toe in their first front door. The Institute of fiscal studies tells us that wealth has grown so rapidly, compared with earnings from work, since the 2008 financial crisis, driven by a surge in house prices, that young people can no longer rely on hard work to improve their living standards as they age. You can barely afford to rent, you can't afford to buy, you can't afford to save to even keep up with the rate of price rises...
When the city you live in makes it into the top 5 cities in the world to invest in property...it then quickly becomes the most unaffordable city in the UK. Homes become houses, houses become property, property becomes capital and capital becomes wealth. And accumulating wealth will always involve luck. And neither how much you educate yourself or the hours you put in, the systemic structures around you will keep you in your place.
So the answer to the question of why… is nothing… I have done nothing wrong, except being born in the wrong place, at the wrong time, into the wrong system, with an ideology that my hard work will pay off… as I slowly approach middle age I realise that I have an excellent track record of paying off mortgages… except they were always someone else's… and that my hard work of earnings and taxes has gone into sustaining this system of depravity.
Thus I am selling my luck for the chance to have somewhere to call home. Because A person needs a little place. Small as it may be. Of which he can say, "This is mine, here I live, here I love, here I find my rest. This is my land, this is my home".
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