We were very worried about SIDS when our daughter was born (11 months ago). We had all sort of monitors and sensors you can think of, only to realise with time that it was actually a source of stress for all of us.
I agree with you but I am wondering how would that work on a country specific level. Each country in Europe has their own privacy laws when it comes to query these kind of databases. Not to mention the EU adding another layer in the process.
Take for instance the credit scoring system. There is no such thing as Expedia or privately maintained credit scoring system outside the UK. In France, the Bank of France maintains files which are only available to financial institutions holding a licence.
Another example, in the UK, the sex offenders register is only available through the police, in other countries, there have been citizen initiatives to create such database for specific areas.
This kind of service is more realistic in the US as their SSN is the main ID for background check.
I stopped reading when the ridiculous statement that property will always rise in value and doubles in value every 10 years came up.
Simple (and I mean really simple) mathematics would make it obvious to anyone (who didn't really badly want to believe otherwise) that nothing can continue to rise in price over inflation indefinitely. There will always be a correction at some point.
Especially, nothing can double in price every 10 years consistently and indefinitely.
Sooner or later, the bottom falls out of the market for one reason or another and people get burnt.
While I agree with your sentiment about property values, your statement "nothing can continue to rise in price over inflation indefinitely" is not true, unless I'm misunderstanding something.
It is possible for an asset class to have greater returns than inflation (in fact, most do), but with increased risk. While this increased risk does mean 'corrections' will happen, returns for most asset classes (especially equity) are significantly higher than inflation in the long run. A world in which no asset class could outpace inflation would require zero economic growth.
I guess if the asset class is divisible it can rise in value indefinitely. But simple logic says that if anything rises in real value every year, eventually no-one can afford to buy it. Of course, this assumes that the average earnings don't rise alongside it, but that's the definition of inflation.
The London property market has been around for about 2000 years, more or less in its current form. If property prices really doubled every ten years indefinitely, and assuming it cost 1 penny to buy a London townhouse in 0ad, then ridiculousness ensues.
The last thirty years have been atypical of property prices. My theory, bolstered by little other than observation and deduction, is that we're seeing the effect of women entering the workplace. House prices are constrained by affordability (or the availability of money, which is why interest-free loans from Japan enabled Northern Rock to give 100% 100-year mortgages to people who couldn't normally afford houses) and over the last thirty years we've gone from most families having a single income to most families having a double income, so house prices rose consistently over the period and will settle at this new high. It used to be that your house was worth roughly 3x your annual salary, logically it should settle at 3x your combined annual salary. It'll be interesting to see if it does that.
Based on the author's "About Me" page, I suspect the article has a slight London-centric bias on this point. Quadrupling in 20 years (~doubling in real terms?) seems unlikely even for London's atypical market though.
Elsewhere, things are slightly better. Inflation does seem to have improved the prices a bit already, but real wages have dropped too, so they're still not that affordable. I can't say it's looking good for the author right now...
