Interesting Links for 20-01-2022

[andrewducker]

If you're poor then the cost of living has gone up by a *lot* more than 5%

(tags:economics UK poverty )

A NASA Probe Went and Touched the Sun

(tags:sun space NASA )

Coffee can't fix all the cognitive impairments caused by a bad night's sleep

(tags:caffeine psychology sleep )

Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them

As a friend put it "This is how you get Terminators"
(tags:ai abuse misogyny hate )

The gender wage gap is really a child care penalty

(tags:children patriarchy wages gender society )

New rules passed for short-term lets in Scotland

(tags:rental housing Scotland )

Comments

[andrewducker]

Aaah, but only if there's actually room in the market to raise rents that much. Even if CPI goes up, if renters don't have any cash to spend on their homes then you can't put the rent up.

(In general, that is. Depends on how acute the housing shortage is, obviously *some* renters will have spare capacity to pay more rent.)

[danieldwilliam]

Yes, but I think mortgage payments are stickier than rent. Both in terms of market and contract situations and also because Rent = Mortgage plus Maintenance plus Profit and therefore rent includes mortgage interest in itself whereas Mortgage don't include a profit element paid to the owner of the house.

I can't remember the name for the type of good that housing is but one its features is that people will generally pay the most they can afford in order to have a relatively better house (close to schools, shops, lower crime rates etc) and I think that has an impact on the price elasticity and stickiness of rent.

[aldabra]

I've been expecting for a long time that the thing that will burst the housing bubble is food and fuel price rises. Housing has absorbed all the spare money while food and fuel have been absurdly cheap by historical standards, but food and fuel are much less elastic. And the housing market is highly leveraged; when it contracts it can contract a very long way.

But I expected it to be triggered by peak oil and climate change; I thought the pestilence would be along later.