Oh, please ... I know bankers in my personal network actively boasting about how they're managing to the play the situation with interest rates to maximise profit without doing anything productive to achieve it.
That doesn't change my point. Those bankers are probably equally unaware of the actual long-term effects this will have. What I mean is that there are no easy fixes for anything and I'm always skeptical of any action driven by populism. The politicians know that people only care about the first stage of effects.
With that said, I'm no different and I wish the same happened in my country. I am however aware that my feelings are short-sighted.
> Those bankers are probably equally unaware of the actual long-term effects this will have.
However, we're aware of the long-term effects not taxing banks enough brings about, so trying something different seems like a good idea, even if we don't know all of the effects until later.
> Guinness actually doesn’t pay any rent for its iconic St. James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin. That’s because the site has been owned by the Guinness family since 1876, and the current lease runs until 2031.
From 1759 to 1876 is 117 years.
FWIW, as far as I can tell, a 9,000 year lease would have conflicted with the rule against perpetuities. Certainly Cadell v Palmer (1833) set the limit as "lives in being plus twenty-one years[1]" and I gather from https://www.lawreform.ie/_fileupload/Reports/rRuleAgainstPer... that something similar have applied in Ireland at the time of Guinness, certainly by 1833.
As an interesting observation, Arthur Guinness II lived 1768-1855 and 21 years later is 1876. I'm now curious about the actual text of the lease, but I can't easily find a copy online.
I don't think the rule against perpetuities ever prohibited the creation of very long leaseholds, so long as the lease itself vested within the period, because the reversion would already have been vested at the grant of the lease. There are plenty of examples of 999-year leases granted in the 19th century for example.
"We've never had it so good" ...
Next up, the energy sector.