What Will happen when Generation Rent Retire?

I get you. More to the point of this being how the world works in general, it's far more accurate to say "this is how the world right now does NOT work".

The main problem is that housing was turned into a speculative market. Bad idea. Don't touch the necessities of life or you'll reap a whirlwind of pain.

Even if you happen to be on the positive end of the housing situation, accruing the crazy rents (tax aside), it's great until your children have to move out on their own and then they have to spend that same money.

If you're on the negative end of the housing situation, goodnight.

All told, commodifying housing, selling off national housing, giving it away on an international scale...totally a net negative. Nothing is produced, nothing is created, all you've got are a small bunch of speculators that will leg it with the proceeds when it collapses, leaving everyone else holding their dicks looking out windows.

Or, a pyramid scheme.

Again, just a quick glance around the country and you see that for all the eye-watering money involved in housing, billions, trillions even, there is nothing to show for it. There won't be anything to show for it, either.

Again you're circling back to lower wage workers as if slapping someone on 20k with a 5k tax bill is going to magic up a new society without severe consequence for poverty rates, and you get to toddle down to the dentist for a new set of veneers on the public dime. Harebrained stuff.

You'll also have to accept that German goodies come with commensurate higher taxes on middle and higher earners than Ireland.

You already bellyache about your tax bill which unless you're a secret CEO, likely doesn't trouble the mid-30 percentages in effective tax god help you, so something tells me you don't have the stomach for outcome 1. either.

When's the leaving do?

This may come as a surprise, but Ireland has the highest market income inequality in Europe. That is, before taxes and social transfers do their business, the gap between the lowest income deciles and the highest deciles is the most extreme in the EU. (Only the UK was worse before they fecked off).

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/income-inequality-in-ireland-the-devil-is-in-the-detail-1.4653255

Our progressive taxation and transfer system levels this out to about average in the EU after transfers. But, and it's a big but, we do not want the level of market income inequality in the first instance. It displays that there is a very very significant amount of people on low incomes in this country that only get by on transfers - and we have a poster on here that wants to dismantle it because he wants his teeth whitened for free. Go figure.

The problem is structural. You can read threads on here to bate the band about low quality work and how a large part of the economy and employers are addicted like crack to it, with the state picking up the tab.

Pull the plug on it and you have social disaster garunteed.

Further, wealth in Ireland is stored in bricks and mortar. It should come as no surprise that access to housing is a metastisising issue. So even leaving income aside, there is a widening wealth gap on that front also.

After transfers that is correct. Before transfers we have the widest market income inequality.

Our taxation system is noted for being the most progressive in the EU.

In essence we have to a large degree an employers charter where labour is easy-come-easy-go, a large low cost labour cohort in the workforce and declining standard in a lot of sectors. And if there's problems, the state picks up the tab. HAP is the biggest glaring example of that. Over 1 in 2 households in the private rental sector are accessing HAP. Crazy, but these people can't afford to put a roof over their head any other way.

That's the devil's bargain we've struck.

Yes Horn of Africa. All is rosy in the garden, your work here is done.

What a conclusion to reach on the evidence presented to you.

Good boy *rubs belly*

"Renters who decide to keep renting"

"Housing is the same for every generation"

Read those back to yourself there. Then read them again.

You don't get a mortgage on social transfers, and you don't build wealth on social transfers.

The article was in reference to income inequality and how it's defined, not in wealth inequality, which is distinct and not captured by the article.

You're engaging in a form of denialism here.

Oh yawn.

The discrepancies between Ireland and the likes of Germany or the Nordic countries is at the lower end , whether coming into line with those countries in terms of the tax code would give rise to a significant increase in poverty ? ( as you adamantly predict) is really beside the point.

Middle and higher earners in Ireland are not taxed lightly, referring to averages with Ireland doesn’t really work as we are such an anomaly at the lower end.

Are those countries where lower earners pay about four times as much tax as here , seeing very high poverty levels amongst lower earners ?

The at risk of poverty rates tell a different story.