Re: housing benefit
"On the other hand it is still true to say that housing benefit ends up in the pockets of the landlords, isn't it? And that housing benefit is effectively a subsidy/benefit to employers paying low wages?"
Partially. Without Housing Benefit, housing costs would fall, but not massively so. However, since they cannot fall to zero we would still need Housing Benefit, and the hard limit is for landlords to lose money. You would perhaps see a reasonable drop in house price inflation, but the reality is that housing costs are high because of supply and demand. Prices rise until enough people refuse to live somewhere that the supply of houses matches the number of people wanting them. The rest either leave high-demand areas or accept a lower standard (size, number of occupants, etc.) of accommodation than they were previously wishing for.
If you fix supply you get house price inflation. If you fix prices by fiat then you get massive shortages and corruption. There's no real way out of this.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
