Today FM: Varadkar comments on housing deposits discussed

We were on Today FM to talk about comments made by the Taoiseach regarding how people come up with money for a deposit to buy a home. While many were finding it a source of outrage, we were making the point that it’s incredibly common and that it actually is a normal occurrence albeit not ‘the norm’ for everybody (because nothing is universal).

This is a good discussion because in our view it shows the way that housing shortages can turn into all manner of talking point arguments, we don’t think it’s realistic to tell parents you can’t help your kids or to say that it’s wrong in any way, but we do agree with Sinead from TheJournal that we have a housing shortage and that this is really where the problem lies.

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Fixing symptoms is not a solution

This is an interesting conversation that appeared on Bloomberg with Jim Bianco. He makes the interesting point that there are really two roads out of the place we are in, depression or reflation. Internationally Governments are doing all they can to support the economy, the issue however, is that when these plans don’t work it will be pegged as being a ‘failure of capitalism’ when in fact, it only reinforces the fact that capitalism is working as it should by getting past a bubble and letting the prudent players win out in the end. The ‘Why’ is really ‘why are we trying to stop the market from working’ not ‘Why did this happen’ or ‘why me’.

Fixing symptoms is not the same as finding a cure.

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