Posted on 02/04/2020 11:11:31 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Democrats complain about the cost of everything, from health care to prescription drugs to fuel prices (when a Republican is president) to groceries to college tuition, never understanding, or simply not caring, that it’s their policies that drive up prices. So they of course think there’s nothing wrong with their ideas that will accelerate increases in housing costs.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who still has a chance to be the Democrats’ nominee, said a few weeks back that because scientists are scaring her about the climate, “by 2028, no new buildings, no new houses” would be built “without a zero-carbon footprint,” if she had her way.
Meanwhile, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, favored to win the Iowa caucuses, tweeted earlier this month in response to an Economist story about the rising cost of housing:
“This is a crisis. We need national rent control.”
According to Housing Wire, “median home prices in the fourth quarter of 2019 were classified as unaffordable for the average wage earner in 71% of the U.S. counties analyzed.” From the fourth quarter of 2018 to the fourth quarter of 2019, home prices rose 9%, says ATTOM Data Solutions, a property data aggregator. Housing in California, Hawaii, and several large metro areas under Democratic Party control is so unaffordable to so many that those places are in crisis.
Demanding stricter and wider rent-control laws is the conventional response from the political left. But rather than solve the problem, rent control will, in fact, make conditions worse.
Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, a socialist but no Bernie Bro, said in the early 1970s that “in many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing.”
Fellow Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal, a Nobel Prize winner who held “an egalitarian” sympathy for socialism, noted more than 50 years ago that “rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by governments lacking courage and vision.”
Economic literature is filled with research that confirms what our common sense tells us: Government limits on rental rates kills the incentive to build more housing.
A study by California State University, Sacramento, and the Sacramento Regional Research Institute that looked at the effects of rent control in two cities over two decades is but one of many examples. Researchers found that under a rent-control regime, Santa Monica’s rental housing supply fell by more than 8.7%, and in Berkeley it dropped by almost 7.5%.
No one should be surprised by the findings. After all, who wants to invest in homebuilding if there are little or no profits to be earned?
Warren’s diktat for new homes and buildings would also suppress homebuilding. A law that just went into effect in California — where else? — that requires every new house, condominium, and low-rise apartment to have solar panels built on their roofs will add $14,000 to $16,000 for each unit, says Meritage Homes. As steep as that is, it’s a piddling sum compared to the costs it would take to develop structures with no carbon footprints. Making every construction project in the country far more expensive than it should be ensures that little to nothing will be built.
Then there are the trickle-down effects. The higher costs, James Lesser, president of Continental Economics and a Manhattan Institute fellow, writes in the New York Post, “would reduce economic growth and destroy jobs.”
Federal data crunchers tell us “the current pace of building is not enough to meet demand.”
“We estimate,” says a team of Freddie Mac economists and analysts, “that the current rate of demand is approximately 1.62 million housing units per year — 370,000 units more per year than the current rate of supply.”
The shortage will only grow worse should Democrats ever hold the White House and Congress at the same time. The president doesn’t have to be Sanders or Warren, just a member of the party that yearns for authoritarian power over the economy.
The average income “pie” in the USA is around $60,000/year/person. Imagine some four-member families.
Pie Family 1 - $25,000/year
Pie Family 2 - $215,000/year
rebaked a la Sanders-Warren:
Pie Family 1 - $35,000/year
Pie Family 2 - $205,000/year
There’s also the English Section 106 system where just 30% of the houses in a large project have to be “affordable” (not that any English letter carrier could afford an “affordable” house).
My Florida county has a similar system.
My friend in DC has a nearly-new “affordable” unit and a housing voucher to boot. The “affordable” amount is around the maximum housing voucher amount.
To buy printed copies of all the Florida state-wide building codes costs about $3,000.
Sanders is old enough to remember the projects in the large cities and what happened to them. He clearly either didn’t care or is not interested in the past facts and impacts of what that sort of thinking did. Marxist PoS.
According to one of his campaign managers they are going to call the gulags and put conservatives in them.
In 1979 Iran took 70 Americans hostage for 444 days. America united, but one politician stood alone. Socialist Workers Party leader Bernie Sanders supported Ayatolla Khomeini against the US, condemned President Carter for imperialism and accused the hostages of being CIA spies.
This is what Democrats have become.
Bernie owns 3 high end houses.
Is he renting any of them out???
Time for your dirt nap Bern.
SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
The State forces you to give one to your neighbor, shoots the neighbor
and forces you to milk them both, giving all milk back to the state.
The State gives you a cup of sour milk.
LIBERALISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both cows, slaughters them for their own food,
and taxes you to death for worthless social programs, for having
the animals originally.
LEFTISM
You have 2 cows.
The State terrrorizes the animals until they can’t produce milk,
beats you and your wife to death, and puts your daughters & sons
into the Pedophile Nation, for the Epsteins, Weiners, Clintons etc.
PROGRESSIVISM
You have 2 cows.
Progs advocate for advancements in science, technology,
economic development and social organization, but they’re so full
of bullshit, nothing ever changes.
You still have 2 cows.
MARXISM
You have 2 cows.
The government takes both and tosses you into a hog pen, where you’re
devoured and never found.
COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you nothing.
They shoot your family and put you in a gulag.
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, promises more free cows, lets you vote and gives you sour milk.
FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.
NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots your wife and kids.
ANARCHISM
You have 2 cows.
The State shoots the cows, you and your family.
CRONY CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
The State takes both, milks, slaughters them, and makes a tidy profit from the sale
of choice meat cuts and fresh milk.
You get some lousy hamburger and a jar of sour milk.
BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, hires a sub-contractor to milk the other, and then throws the milk away.
TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.
CONTEMPORARY WALL STREETISM
You have two cows.
You sell one, bundle the other with a goat, a mule,
and two dry cows.
You pile into the derivatives market, buy a Gulfstream
and when it all comes down around your ears...
You go to the government for a bailout.
Democrats have no plans but, to control, tax, and limit the human race in mind, in imagination, and in dreams.
I say this based on the Democratic plantation envisioned by LBJ. Living apart from The State is dangerous!
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