What would you want to happen to diminish income inequality in the USA

[gorfias]

In another thread I was asked what policy(ies) of Trump I thought have helped the labor classes in the USA.

I wrote I think his pro-USA position and/or posturing helped an irrational and emotion driven stock market. I think tax cuts, even for the rich, put more money in their pockets with which to buy stuff or invest: both helpful to the labor class. (Or lose if they hoard it).

I've also heard no matter the tax rate, the richest among us are simply motivated to engage in legalized tax evasion: tax rates by themselves do not impact revenues taken in.

Example:
I noted that I'm on the fence regarding inflation. It punishes money hoarding but I hear it exacerbates income inequality. I do not know the truth of this one way or another.

EDIT: People out there worry about runaway deflation too.
Example: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/111414/what-difference-between-inflation-and-deflation.asp

If college and medical coverage become nationalized, that might even some things out. But those that do not receive a subsidy pay for it. Medical coverage will be disproportionately for the elderly and relatively well off, having had a life time to earn and save wealth. The young have their own problems. And college? Car mechanics will exist in an economic environment in which they are paying for people to take even frivolous paths of study.

What would you want to see happen to diminish income inequality in the US. Do you even think it a problem?

 

[Seanchaidh]

I noted that I'm on the fence regarding inflation. It punishes money hoarding but I hear it exacerbates income inequality. I do not know the truth of this one way or another.

It's more complicated than that.

Yes, it means that a bank account of $X isn't worth as much if X stays the same. However, those who have lots of wealth typically don't have it primarily in dollars. They have stocks and bonds. Stocks typically go up with inflation. Bonds don't benefit from inflation-- quite the opposite-- but investors typically demand higher yields if inflation is expected, so there is a risk of inflation priced in.

Inflation makes debts easier to manage, as incomes and wages that increase faster than the principal make them easy to pay off. Creditors can also decline to provide loans if they expect inflation will make lending not worthwhile for them-- or potentially demand a higher interest rate.

The thing about all this is that wages don't necessarily increase with other prices. They certainly can. But they don't have to.

So I guess the point is: the effects of inflation are various and depend on a number of other factors which make inflation alone not terribly relevant to income inequality.

What I would like to see is every business restructured to give its workers control of all of the surplus value that they produce and the conditions under which they produce it rather than giving profits to owners. Owners who also work can be compensated purely for the latter.

 

[Buyetyen]

What I would like to see is every business restructured to give its workers control of all of the surplus value that they produce and the conditions under which they produce it rather than giving profits to owners. Owners who also work can be compensated purely for the latter.

Agreed. Adam Smith himself said that landlords are essentially useless because they produce nothing.

Also, free college and health insurance, paid sick leave and parental leave, a UBI, and a total abandonment of the Chicago school idea that businesses exist only to enrich their shareholders.

 

[gorfias]

... those who have lots of wealth typically don't have it primarily in dollars. They have stocks and bonds. Stocks typically go up with inflation. Bonds don't benefit from inflation-- quite the opposite-- but investors typically demand higher yields if inflation is expected, so there is a risk of inflation priced in.

I have heard that money managers, depending upon what is going on, shifts the balance of where money is invested: either stocks or bonds even while keeping some money in both at all times. This may explain some of thier motivations. Thanks.

Inflation makes debts easier to manage, as incomes and wages that increase faster than the principal make them easy to pay off. Creditors can also decline to provide loans if they expect inflation will make lending not worthwhile for them-- or potentially demand a higher interest rate.

Got a bro that bought as house in the early 80s. I think he was paying 18%. Paid only $40K but was still told, "see you at your foreclosure". I think they'll lend the money but it is going to cost you! (My last mortgage was under 5%. As low as 3% now. I could see that just driving up house prices. But houses will get bigger. And cost more. and cost more to heat and maintain!)

The thing about all this is that wages don't necessarily increase with other prices. They certainly can. But they don't have to.

So I guess the point is: the effects of inflation are various and depend on a number of other factors which make inflation alone not terribly relevant to income inequality.

What I would like to see is every business restructured to give its workers control of all of the surplus value that they produce and the conditions under which they produce it rather than giving profits to owners. Owners who also work can be compensated purely for the latter.

The smaller the company, the better idea I think that would be. I've heard some compensation practices are illegal but this sounds doable. (The government doesn't want a private company to promise to take care of all your needs: but it is going to cost you everything you can ever earn... and then some so you die owing your employer). I could see an issue. I heard a guy on talk radio ask why banks won't lend him money to buy a house. If he has to pay rent and has an established history of doing so, he can just as easily pay a mortgage. I'd think the bank is thinking, "we need you to pay your rent as we need your land lord to pay us back money we already lent him." You want a loan to start a business in which profits are shared with workers. That same banker may be thinking, but I want to lend to someone increasing my profits, not the laborers.

Still, the Federal Government has the SBA. I wonder if they can/do help out in this manner? What would other bars would there be to businesses doing this? The manager/owner gets staff motivated to work harder with less supervision to increase profits that increase their own take home pay. The worker makes earns more by making more (A justification made by many sales people for why they do what they do: freedom to work as hard as they want for the money they want.) Some jobs are piece meal: they get paid by how much they produce. Such places have the reputation of being sweat shops. It's got to be better than working for next to nothing.

Agreed. Adam Smith himself said that landlords are essentially useless because they produce nothing.

Also, free college and health insurance, paid sick leave and parental leave, a UBI, and a total abandonment of the Chicago school idea that businesses exist only to enrich their shareholders.

Gotta look up UBI. EDIT: https://time.com/4737956/universal-basic-income/ ahah! Charles Murray would agree. We have huge, nosey bureaucracies that dole out certain social benefits: food stamps, housing vouchers, etc. which are inefficient and intrusive. Murray posits that it is a better idea to simply have a UBI. That a person can spend their own money better than a 3rd party can spend other people's money on them. To date, I understand UBI has been tried and considered a failure. Some examining failing results state the experiment failed in certain ways. It has not been tried correctly. I hope the idea is further examined.

Got to disagree with Adam Smith about Land Lords. My own grandfather on my dad's side was one part time. He owned a 3 family house. His family lived in one, the rent from the other 2 paid the mortgage. So, in a sense, he managed finances in a manner that provided housing to 2 other families. And if anything went wrong, it was up to him to fix it. They used to call NYC the city of nomads. People owned little enough that each season, tenants could move to whatever landlord was offering the bigger better deal. Nowadays, one problem is, we have too much stuff. Would you move from one apartment to another to save $50 a month?
Course, there are other ways for a society to provide housing. But to say a landlord today adds no value seems extreme.
A change I would make: you must put at least 25% down on a house. And mortgages may be for no longer than 10 years.
At first, houses might be smaller as the banks will not be able to lend as much. Not a bad thing. (When I was young, broke and a new parent, the bank offered me and the missus about $350K for a house on a 30 year. Cool. Taking such a loan means I don't eat. And I'm competing with other people that WILL take that loan, even if they cannot really pay it back). With 25% down, people have more skin in the game and a greater interest in getting value for their money. A housing crash will not have as big an impact on the banks which has an impact on the greater society. The bank also will likely get a taste of people saving that 25% so there is a win there for them as well.

People will also have an easier time of walking away from an underpaying job as they aren't worried about a 30 year mortgage. I think that would allow people greater freedom to demand greater pay. (I've heard the mortgage interest deduction for taxes and other incentives from the government were to get workers trapped in such loans. Makes it harder to walk away from an under paying job or help in forming a labor union).

 

[09philj]

Oh, abolish private property. Co-operatives and mutuals as far as the eye can see... what do you mean the capitalists will never agree to it?
There are a few things which you can still do under capitalism, although the US still wouldn't like a lot of them:
1. Trust bust. US anti-trust laws are frankly pathetic. Take an axe to the big businesses, chop them up into smaller businesses.
2. Legalise drugs.
3. Get rid of privatised prisons, what the fuck is wrong with you?
4. Properly fund the IRS. Introduce return free filing.
5. Universal healthcare.
6. Build a functional high speed passenger rail network.
7. Build an absolute fuck ton of public housing. End homelessness, fuck up the landlords.
8. Tax relief for co-operatives and mutuals.
9. Stricter rules to stop lobbyists running DC.
10. Do whatever is necessary to get equal outcomes between schools.
11. Stop union busting.

 

[Buyetyen]

Got to disagree with Adam Smith about Land Lords. My own grandfather on my dad's side was one part time. He owned a 3 family house. His family lived in one, the rent from the other 2 paid the mortgage. So, in a sense, he managed finances in a manner that provided housing to 2 other families. And if anything went wrong, it was up to him to fix it.

The initial argument Smith put forth was targeted less at people renting homes than people who charged rent for commercial purposes. As he observed, these people got a share of the yield from other's labor just because it was done on some land they owned. These days, the housing market has taken on a certain predatory character because as Marx would later point out, the interests of a landlord are about extracting as much value from tenants as possible. Smith and Marx both astutely pointed out that the easiest way to increase the value of land and consequently rent is to have other people build shit next to you. Your land value increases, you increase rent on your tenants and you didn't have to do anything. While Smith found this unfair, he found it tolerable since it meant that building up society would become a priority to increase land values. As we've seen play out however, Marx was vindicated on this one as landlords today want housing prices to continue rising, which is good for ROI, but sucks for everyone else.

 

[Dreiko]

A maximum wage that can only be 3 times as big as the minimum wage of any employee at a workplace would go a long way. No matter how good a CEO is, he isn't proviing the value of hundreds (if not thousands in the cases of the owners of wallmart or amazon for example) of other people. That way if someone wants to make a higher wage they will have to raise everyone's wage alongside their own. They'll still be making x3 the lowest wage though so they'd still be what we consider rich. Just not oligarch level rich.

Agreed. Adam Smith himself said that landlords are essentially useless because they produce nothing.

Also, free college and health insurance, paid sick leave and parental leave, a UBI, and a total abandonment of the Chicago school idea that businesses exist only to enrich their shareholders.

I don't get where people who think landlords produce nothing are experiencing their landlords. Maybe if you're talking about a slumlord or something sure but a normal landlord will have to pay for the maintenance of the properties, will have to replace any of the included appliances (oven, fridge, etc.) when they break, they'll have to, in the case of the community being gated, pay the security that watches the gates. If you have a communal laundry area for a certain living block they'll have to pay to fix any of the dryers or washing machines that break down, not to mention provide them in the first place. They'll have to hire people to cut the lawns and do house maintenance every time a toilet flush breaks or a kitchen sink needs replacing. If you don't have the landlord you will have to pay for all of those things yourself and they do add up to quite a bit of money. Especially if you're unlucky and a lot of appliances you get end up being faulty or you need to rebuild a wall or something because of something going wrong in the house. That's a risk you're being shielded from when you rent so because a landlord undertakes that risk they deserve to make some profit once they've payed for all of the above stuff.



Also, this doesn't take into account that someone isn't obligated to rent out their property. People could just own these houses and not rent them out but it'd hurt the people who can't buy their own house more since they'd be forced to live in motels than they'd be hurt by the lost rent fees. In fact, this is why there's an affordable housing crisis in some large cities. You have people from China laundering their money by buying houses and just leaving them empty. What we want is more people to be landlords in fact.

 

[Trunkage]

A maximum wage that can only be 3 times as big as the minimum wage of any employee at a workplace would go a long way. No matter how good a CEO is, he isn't proviing the value of hundreds (if not thousands in the cases of the owners of wallmart or amazon for example) of other people. That way if someone wants to make a higher wage they will have to raise everyone's wage alongside their own. They'll still be making x3 the lowest wage though so they'd still be what we consider rich. Just not oligarch level rich.

Here I was thinking I was being mean wanting a limit to CEO earns per year (including bonus and parachutes) being $10m

I would say a fairer number might be 10x mainly because they usually are hard working and make tough decisions

And the issue is what happens with stockholders. Because this just sounds like they could rake in the money by forcing the minimum wage down. A reduction in wages across the board would be beneficial to the bottom line. CEOs and the average worker works way harder than stockholders

 

[Agema]

Got to disagree with Adam Smith about Land Lords. My own grandfather on my dad's side was one part time. He owned a 3 family house. His family lived in one, the rent from the other 2 paid the mortgage. So, in a sense, he managed finances in a manner that provided housing to 2 other families. And if anything went wrong, it was up to him to fix it. They used to call NYC the city of nomads. People owned little enough that each season, tenants could move to whatever landlord was offering the bigger better deal. Nowadays, one problem is, we have too much stuff. Would you move from one apartment to another to save $50 a month?

From a certain ethical point of view, most people would probably say that the most deserved wealth is that which you worked for. But rent in many cases is not acquired through work but simply happening to own stuff, and therefore acts to transfer wealth from workers to non-workers.

The alternative to rent is ownership. If you pay towards ownership, you're both getting property use and you're also buying an asset (i.e. gaining wealth). That asset is incredibly useful: sell it to get money if you need it, use it as collateral for loans (start a business?), etc. If you own and don't have to pay a mortgage, you have more money to use creatively as you get more of your paycheque as disposable income. If more and more people have to rent, what happens is that more and more people are using their money sub-optimally, by just giving it to someone else. And in many cases, they effectively have no choice.

In a business sense, therefore rent can constrain entrepreneurialism. Imagine someone starts a successful restaurant in a rented property (most city centre business spaces are all rented). The property owner sees how successful the restaurant is and raises the rent to cream some of it off. Essentially, the landlord is depriving profits from someone who is doing something much more productive than the landlord. The restaurant can theoretically move if rents are too high, but of course there would be a big, big cost involved in doing so. This principle isn't just land and housing: intellectual property rights can also be used to extract rents, for instance.

Also, desire to extract rent causes properties to be bought for rent, which drives up property prices. This means that people start pouring money into homes, but homes don't increase productivity, where business investment does. Therefore, soaring property markets (and therefore potentially involving rental properties) can cause national wealth to be invested in unproductive ways.

Of course, rent does play an important role to some extent: some people do just want short-term accommodaton or can't afford to purchase at the time, and rentals are providing them with a vital service. There's really nothing wrong with people like your grandfather renting out rooms / houses on an individual level. But there is a point where rent can be used to extract wealth from the productive in ways that are harmful to society and the economy: that's what Adam Smith was warning about.

 

[gorfias]

The initial argument Smith put forth was targeted less at people renting homes than people who charged rent for commercial purposes. As he observed, these people got a share of the yield from other's labor just because it was done on some land they owned. These days, the housing market has taken on a certain predatory character because as Marx would later point out, the interests of a landlord are about extracting as much value from tenants as possible. Smith and Marx both astutely pointed out that the easiest way to increase the value of land and consequently rent is to have other people build shit next to you. Your land value increases, you increase rent on your tenants and you didn't have to do anything. While Smith found this unfair, he found it tolerable since it meant that building up society would become a priority to increase land values. As we've seen play out however, Marx was vindicated on this one as landlords today want housing prices to continue rising, which is good for ROI, but sucks for everyone else.

The commercial renter has the option to seek out the bigger better deal. Problems that can and likely do occur:
1: How much does it cost to move? Likely, a butt ton.
2: Location, location, location. A restaurant me and mine adored moved from one city to another. But their rep had been built at site 1. They got creamed and closed down at site 2. Would they have gone bust had they stayed at site 1?
Others do end up buying. One place at which I worked rented but ultimately moved to a new place at which my boss did not rent: he bought the entire building and rents out excess office space.
Even in commercial spaces, it is as if a landlord is engaged in financial management while taking on duties such as maintaining the parking lot even after snow storms and more. (My buddy/former boss had a huge issue with this pandemic. He was responsible for keeping toilet paper in the bathrooms, which initially became scarce).
Even commercially, land lords do have a function. This sort of work may not be the best manner with which to do things, but I would not call such land lords worthless parasites.

 

[09philj]

Also, raise capital gains tax so that it significantly exceeds income tax.

 

[Dreiko]

Here I was thinking I was being mean wanting a limit to CEO earns per year (including bonus and parachutes) being $10m

I would say a fairer number might be 10x mainly because they usually are hard working and make tough decisions

And the issue is what happens with stockholders. Because this just sounds like they could rake in the money by forcing the minimum wage down. A reduction in wages across the board would be beneficial to the bottom line. CEOs and the average worker works way harder than stockholders

Studies show that around $70k a year is where money stops having a notable effect on happiness so you really don't need to appease greed. Just make your company super profitable and raise everyone else with you if you want more. As for the stockholders, you just have to have the workers be given some of the stock too as part of their pay so they won't be easy to exploit that way.

 

[Silvanus]

1) To have the most immediate and most obvious impact, significantly raise the highest rate of income tax, and corporation tax. The US has operated with significantly higher rates in its past perfectly successfully, and has managed to invest in huge infrastructure projects and other spending commitments at the same time (such as the New Deal). Perhaps introduce qualifications to lessen the burden on smaller companies or companies who employ very few employees.

2) International co-operation on closing tax avoidance schemes, loopholes, and tax havens. This needs to be an effort alongside other countries which turn a blind eye, like the UK. The option of companies to turn a profit and pay little-to-no tax in the countries in which they operate is grotesque and needs to be comprehensively undone. See Amazon.

3) Strengthen anti-trust laws.

4) Require companies to have a position (or better, multiple positions) on trustee boards and directorship boards for workers or worker representatives.

5) Place an upper limit on wages. To be frank, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that billionaires should exist, and the majority of that money sits inert in bank accounts-- not being spent, not being invested, not even having a stimulating effect on the economy. The money currently sitting inert in the bank accounts of about 1,000 people could provide housing and food for hundreds of millions of people; save millions of lives.

If not a rigid upper limit, then perhaps tie the highest wage to the lowest wage. The highest earner in a company cannot earn more than 50 times what the lowest earner earns, for instance.

 

[stroopwafel]

1) Taxes dependent on where profits are made, not where company is located. So no writing off mass revenue on a supply company in Panama.
2) 50% tax on stock dividend to discourage vulture capitalism that only profit 2% shareholders at the expense of workers, the environment and even the company itself(bleeding the company dry for short term gains and needing the taxpayer to fill their reserves at times of crisis).
3) Increase minimum wage and provide affordable housing by codifying minimal living standards into law(so it becomes a responsibility of the public sector).
4) Mitigate unfair competition through international trade regulations by ie preventing subsidized corporations to compete with non-subsidized ones that create a race to the bottom at the expense of the average worker and, again, the environment by having wage competitions being one of the most important determinants of low wages and manufacture of mountains of cheap, plastic crap that ends up in the seas.
5) Forbid corporate lobby direct access to policy makers that undermine the democratic legitimacy of financial, corporate, fiscal and social legislation and due process.

In reality big business and government is so entangled there is hardly a difference anymore but in perception of the public there is still this 'capitalism vs socialism' dichotomy that couldn't be more outdated if it tried. Private enterprise is needed to generate wealth, employment opportunities and goods/services for people but unregulated capitalism flies off the rails real quick and the U.S. is definitely one of the worst examples of this. Though a superclass of international capital that transcends boundaries and nation-states already exists.

 

[meiam]

One of the biggest issue affecting wealth is house ownership, most peoples spent a very significant portion of their income toward rent/mortage. The reason for this is because people want to live in very small area of land (successful city and their suburb) but the land is limited. Now there's an easy solution to this, build upward, you can squeeze more people in the same amount of space. The problem is building of new properties as actually gone down over the last few decades, despite more and more people wanting to live and cities, the number of unit added are low, and the new unit tend to either be very small or extremely luxurious. As a results the price/rent of properties is going up faster than rent is going up and some people are unable to move to city where they could be payed a lot more for doing similar job than what they are doing at the moment.

The reason for this problem is that building new unit in city is extremely difficult. Not in my backyard is a plague on cities, the moment someone want to build a new residential tower everyone in the surrounding area will do everything they can to stop it, they'll talk about all kind of non sense like it being ugly and such, but the real reason they do that is because home owner like that price are high because of scarcity. If a big tower would be build near their home, the scarcity would go down and they'd "lose" money, this is particularly important for middle income family for whom most of their wealth is tied to their properties. An extreme example of that is LA, where building upward is almost impossible and a tons of small regulation are in place, making it very difficult to get anything started, as a results residence are prohibitively expensive there. This need to be stop, NIMB has to be severely curtained, most pointless regulation have to be abolished (please never ever talk of rent control, this only benefit people who already live there and is hugely unfair to anyone who would want to move there) and it needs to become much easier for developer to buyout properties so long as they build bigger one in place.

 

[Silvanus]

One of the biggest issue affecting wealth is house ownership, most peoples spent a very significant portion of their income toward rent/mortage. The reason for this is because people want to live in very small area of land (successful city and their suburb) but the land is limited. Now there's an easy solution to this, build upward, you can squeeze more people in the same amount of space. The problem is building of new properties as actually gone down over the last few decades, despite more and more people wanting to live and cities, the number of unit added are low, and the new unit tend to either be very small or extremely luxurious. As a results the price/rent of properties is going up faster than rent is going up and some people are unable to move to city where they could be payed a lot more for doing similar job than what they are doing at the moment.

The reason for this problem is that building new unit in city is extremely difficult. Not in my backyard is a plague on cities, the moment someone want to build a new residential tower everyone in the surrounding area will do everything they can to stop it, they'll talk about all kind of non sense like it being ugly and such, but the real reason they do that is because home owner like that price are high because of scarcity. If a big tower would be build near their home, the scarcity would go down and they'd "lose" money, this is particularly important for middle income family for whom most of their wealth is tied to their properties. An extreme example of that is LA, where building upward is almost impossible and a tons of small regulation are in place, making it very difficult to get anything started, as a results residence are prohibitively expensive there. This need to be stop, NIMB has to be severely curtained, most pointless regulation have to be abolished (please never ever talk of rent control, this only benefit people who already live there and is hugely unfair to anyone who would want to move there) and it needs to become much easier for developer to buyout properties so long as they build bigger one in place.

With land, the issue isn't true scarcity, though: more than enough buildings literally sit empty in London, unused for years.

We have enough space and enough buildings to house the entire homeless population already. What the country doesn't have is the political will to do anything about it.

 

[Agema]

Fundamentally, I think the distribution of the gains of society always, always, always, boil down to power. Authority goes hand in hand with wealth. Where authority does not derive from wealth, those in authority use their authority to direct wealth to themselves (aristocracies, dictatorships, etc.) In democracies where authority is there to be captured by anyone, it is usually captured by the rich (directly or indirectly) because wealth gives them more opportunity to do so. And then they'll use authority to maintain their grip on wealth.

You can see this in the way that elected officials in high office are almost entirely from the middle and upper classes and they are always friends and relations of, and primarily socialise with, people who occupy high rank in the private sector. Money to run campaigning and lobbying swills in disproportionately from rich individuals and large corporations.

Wealth inequality and power inequality are therefore ultimately pretty much the same thing. The way to deal with wealth inequality is therefore to give poorer people more power. Ideally for them to get organised and take that power themselves, except that in reality the systems are set up to prevent them doing so: it often needs affluent people who care about them to do it for them. Whether that's power over the way goods and services are produced (e.g. worker representation on corporate boards, employee shareholders) or politics (e.g. restricting the ability of private money to infuence elections), or social and political education to improve their notions of self-determination. Welfare, raising the minimum wage is nice, but they fundamentally don't address power - all they do is make subsistence a little less unpleasant and they'll be undercut soon enough without persistent political pressure to maintain them. Thus such policies are really about control of political power.

The USA is really the world's best model of plutocracy. The less affluent are persistently disempowered - union bashing, minimal labour regulations, massive cost of elections, lobbying money, etc. There have always been a million and one schemes to suppress voter turnout amongst the poor (slavery, Jim Crow, removal of voting rights for those with felonies, poor maintenance of electoral rolls, voter purges, now the new voter ID laws). Even gerrymandering is in effect suppression of voter power - albeit of everyone, not just the poor. One of the most successful aspects of US society is to teach the poor to accept it. Capitalism is societally believed in, often as a naturally just and moral world: if you're poor, it's therefore because you failed at life. Not because of institutional reasons that your school was shit, your class has been consistently disempowered and ignored, or you lacked healthcare and spent time ill instead of making yourself a better person. No, you were not good enough, not talented enough, not hard-working enough... not deserving enough of anything better. The rich people do deserve it, and as long as they are left free to do as they please, the poor will get the crumbs that drop from their table, so just leave them to it. Hail unfettered capitalism!

 

[meiam]

With land, the issue isn't true scarcity, though: more than enough buildings literally sit empty in London, unused for years.

We have enough space and enough buildings to house the entire homeless population already. What the country doesn't have is the political will to do anything about it.

The homeless population is tiny, it's insignificant, plus homelessness is mostly a mental health issues, nothing to do with housing supply. The innocupancy rate in London is around 5%, nothing special (you'll always have some % of innocupancy as people/commerce move around some building will naturally be empty, it's impossible to drive down to 0).

 

[Silvanus]

The homeless population is tiny, it's insignificant, plus homelessness is mostly a mental health issues, nothing to do with housing supply.

It's not mostly driven by mental health issues; that's one of numerous causes. According to the Big Issue, the most common cause is the ending of shorthold tenancy and eviction without anywhere else to go. Domestic violence accounts for thousands; eviction by parents or family accounts for thousands.

The innocupancy rate in London is around 5%, nothing special (you'll always have some % of innocupancy as people/commerce move around some building will naturally be empty, it's impossible to drive down to 0).

I specifically pointed out that these buildings stand unused and unoccupied for years. This is not a case of unavoidable logistics.

You're the one who brought up scarcity, not me. I'm merely pointing out that the country could address the shortfall of supply right now, if it wanted to: no need to build, only to repurpose.

 

[Tireseas]

Assuming were talking dictator and not having the deal with legislative politics, which is always a major constraint:

Part I

1) Eliminate source of income variable tax rates. All income (w-2, 1099 contracts, capital gains, etc.) all gets counted together as income. You can still write-off expenses, but the gains all count together (with exceptions below).

2) Have a single payer/unified insurance system to cover baseline healthcare. This would mean that most essential services, such as check-ups, examinations, emergency care, optical, dental, prescription drugs and equipment, etc. would be covered by a centralized government pot, likely with some price controls and subsidies to balance out the supply and demand curb. This would likely also have something akin to a $10 potentially waive-able copay to prevent overuse (you generally want some barrier to prevent extremely minor matters from clogging up hospital intake). It should be noted that this does not eliminate private insurance, but rather relegates it to the higher-end plans that may have nicer treatment centers and other less-critical benefits, which is common in many counties. Employers could still offer this private insurance extension, but the tax-write-off would probably be halved compared to the current system.

3) Limit trust and charitable write-offs. One of the biggest issues with high-end charitable donations is that it is often primarily a tax avoidance scheme rather than a philanthropic effort. This isn't to say that those efforts aren't worth it, but because of the way the tax code is structured, it is fairly easy to donate to causes that are of dubious social value. Capping this write-off at $250,000 per year would still allow substantial large dollar donations, but it would force the individual to treat it as philanthropic rather than a means of reducing their tax rate. The current limit is 60% of income.

4) Roll back a lot of welfare "reforms." Starting in the 1980s and continuing through today, there has been a movement led by conservatives to "reform" the welfare system, with some of the most notable changes being delegating responsibility for enrollment and administration to the state, which created a extra layer of bureaucracy on top of extremely divergent approaches to welfare, the elimination of cash grants in favor of dedicated funds (ex. food stamps), and often onerous qualifications to trying assistance they are entitled to. Re-centralizing the welfare system and eliminating most barriers to entry other than ZIP-code based income, family unit size, and disability costs. While fraud is certainly a concern, it remains statistically low and can be addressed through more funding to government auditors and investigators.