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[–] 14 points 2 days ago (12 children)

Her think tank's research found that 41% of homes sold through Right to Buy are now privately rented out. "Homes that were built with public money, and with the aim of providing an affordable and secure path to home ownership, have since been turned into assets," Harris says.

This was the real aim of Right to Buy - turn low-rent council housing into money-making assets for the rich.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 days ago (10 children)

    What makes you say that's the real aim, rather than the stated aims?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago (9 children)

    Tory philosophy. The state = bad. The state supplying cheap housing is like fingers screeching down a blackboard to neo liberal fanatics.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 days ago (8 children)

    I don't understand how that leads to your conclusion. If it's because of the Tory philosophy that the state is bad, surely the real aim would have been to reduce the power of the state?

    The reason I'm asking is because I think people tend to be overly cynical and won't accept the possibility that people disagree with them honestly, finding it easier to believe that they disagree dishonestly. To me it seems perfectly plausible that Tories thought they could reduce the power of the state, do something good for ordinary people, and expand their voting base, without realising/believing that this approach would lead to many (but not most) of those assets essentially becoming investments.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago (7 children)

    They're reducing the power of the state by selling off its assets on the cheap.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 day ago (6 children)

    I don't know what point you're trying to make; that doesn't tell us anything more about why, except what we've already said.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago (5 children)

    Because normally the Tories sell it off to themselves or their mates. In this instance, they let council tenants benefit from their practice.

    Doing so endears people to them and their behaviour of selling off assets. It thus makes it easier for them to get away with selling more state assets off to their mates.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 day ago (4 children)

    Thatcherism was a huge program of selling stuff off to ordinary people. Your reasoning makes no sense at all.

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  • [–] 2 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

    Most of the stuff was sold off to the wealthy on the cheap. A little bit was sold off to ordinary people on the cheap.

    Selling some to ordinary people made the bulk of the fire sale more palatable.

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  • [–] 0 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

    That doesn't match my understanding. Even if you convince me about the proportion, you'd still need to have some reason to believe that your claimed motivation was the real one, because just selling stuff to rich people and ordinary people doesn't automatically mean the portion sold to ordinary people was done primarily to make the other portion palatable.

    You're just asserting this was the motivation without trying to convince me.

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  • [–] 2 points 15 hours ago (1 child)

    I'm not asserting intent, I'm describing effect.

    Regardless of their intent or whether their belief in the philosophy was genuine, the effect of selling some state assets off to regular people was to make the rest of it more palatable to the general population.

    If I had to speculate on intent, I would say their reason was to expand the stock of the private housing market, primarily for the benefit of those who trade at a commercial scale.

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