tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post6941320684379802949..comments2024-03-28T11:04:16.315+00:00Comments on Boffy's Blog: Beast From The East?Boffyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-57996751997595696492018-03-01T10:33:01.120+00:002018-03-01T10:33:01.120+00:00George,
The big increase in female employment cam...George,<br /><br />The big increase in female employment came in the 1950's. In actual fact, during that period house prices fell from their post-war peak. In 1947, when my parents came to buy their first house, there was such a shortage that they could only get an old terraced house, which cost them £1,000. Had they been able to wait a few years, they could have bought a brand new, semi-detached house in the same village, for just £250! Its another reflection of what I was saying about time horizons and black swan events. Imagine if house buyers today could envisage a situation in which the massively overpriced houses they have bought, and are being encouraged to buy were about to fall by 75-80%!<br /><br />The reason that house prices fell in the 1950's compared to the post war peak is that there was large scale council house building, as well as private house building. Councils compulsory purchased land and property to build, and land prices remained low, which meant that the cost of new build houses was not inflated, as it is today, by exorbitant land prices.<br /><br />During the 1950's, and 60's, it was not common for people to have long commutes, even where both people were working. In North Staffordshire, for example, it was common for men to work in the pit, the steel works, and when it was built the Michelin, whilst women worked on potbanks, in hospitals or shops and offices. Many of these places ran Works buses, but buses ran on many routes every ten minutes. People bought cars not because they needed them to commute, but because they simply found they could afford them, as wages and living standards rose in the 1950's and 60's, and as the price of cars themselves fell in real terms, as did other consumer goods.<br /><br />It creates a feed back loop. Once people have cars their behaviour changes. They start to go to out of town shopping facilities, for example. They use a car to go to work, and so factories start to stop providing a works bus, hospitals stop providing hospital buses, the frequency of public transport is diminished, people find it increasingly difficult to get to work without having a car, so more people are led to get a car. Employers are able to recruit workers from longer distances, which tends to reduce wages, and means workers are led to have to seek employment with longer commute times. People start to move into more pleasant living environments in the suburbs, which also leads to a decay of urban areas. Families then need more than one car, because even travel from the suburbs to the towns and cities requires several buses when they run, and link up, the kids go to different primary and secondary schools that might be miles apart and so on.<br /><br />In the 1980's this was exacerbated by Thatcher, who encouraged more individual family cost centres, by encouraging kids to feel that they had to own their own home as soon as they left school, whereas previously they would have stayed at home until they married, or at least until their late 20's. By encouraging kids to feel the need to buy a home in their teens, it created many more cost centres, each of which has to buy consumer durables, cars etc., which was a way of the Thatcher regime dealing with the overproduction of the 1980's, at a time of low wages, by fuelling a credit binge that produced the huge levels of debt we have today.Boffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-40377745766756973112018-02-28T13:48:17.643+00:002018-02-28T13:48:17.643+00:00How much was the mass entry of women into the work...How much was the mass entry of women into the workforce (along with the fact that women's wages were essentially used to bid up the price of houses, so that two incomes became essential in most areas) a factor in the rise of long commutes?<br /><br />If husband and wife work in widely separated locations, then at least one of them must have a long commute regardless of where they choose to live.George Cartyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12170378024031141482noreply@blogger.com