fivemack: (Default)
Tom Womack ([personal profile] fivemack) wrote2007-01-02 01:52 am

Where the money went, 2006



(SLC is the Student Loans Corporation; I have not suddenly become an inadequately-tithe-paying Mormon)


If you compare with 2004



I'm surprised how consistent my habits have been; housing's more expensive (a whole house in Cambridge costs more to rent than half a house in Cheltenham), I've stopped learning to drive, and, worryingly, I seem to have become about 25% meaner when I look at the 'charity' and 'gift.out' segments; this latter I need to do something about.

I should probably apologise in advance to American readers for the invisible sliver that is medical costs, and to the taxpayers of the future for the absence of 'savings' segments, though income tax and pension contributions come straight out of salary and don't show up in the data I use for these graphs.

Re: TMI

[identity profile] scat0324.livejournal.com 2007-01-03 11:10 am (UTC)(link)
I'd bet that such a house price growth would be symptom resulting from overpopulation though

It's not as simple as that. The cost of houses is a supply-and-demand thing, but the demand isn't just an increase in population - it's a change in aspirations meaning people don't want to share properties in the way they used to (mostly as families). With a downturn in the economy, I suspect people would go back to deciding to share in one way or the other, and demand for property would fall without a matching reduction in the overall population.