Fair enough. My sarcasm was uncalled for. My apologies.
I suspect that we’re probably in a fair amount of agreement about what measures are necessary to actually increase housing stock so that we can actually house more people. I get a little alarmed when more posters are devoted to how landlords are evil than how to create more housing.
I’m surprised we’re at 100+ posts and no one has linked to Finland’s new initiative:
which I learned about from @redesigned in another thread.
I saw it. Apparently it was proposed by the major right wing party and opposed by the major left wing one, so colour me…cautious?
As far as I can tell, empirically, new housing stock production actually seems to be inversely related to the price performance of the existing stock. But I think I understand what you are getting at. If we want developers to build then they would need to have a financial incentive. My counter argument is to unpack the idea of housing from the land. The rental returns for dense urban use housing are generally due to the land value - not the construction value. Construction costs don’t really move that much. In fact higher land values tend to cause a restriction in the amount and use of new construction. In NYC the new construction which made sense was generally luxury product - because when land values are that high it doesnt make sense to build cheap units.
In military spending, the opposite argument is generally used. That we cant expect the private sector to finance capital intensive projects with risky return profiles. So it makes no sense to me that the government would underwrite an F35 program, while at the same time making the argument that it doesnt have the access to capital to underwrite social housing. Since about 40% of GDP is government spending, I think I would make the other argument.
Also there is the concept of “eminent domain”. We have just agreed that incumbent landlords get a windfall gain when they own real estate which becomes more valuable. However we haven’t made any argument that they need to retain those gains to encourage new building. In fact quite the opposite. An argument can be made that the gains in value are due to the decisions of millions of economic actors coming together to create the City. Shouldnt all those economic actors benefit rather than just a narrow subset who bet on the real estate value? Particularly if the rising cost of real estate is jeopardizing the underlying economic rationale of the City in question in the first place? I think maybe the best way of fixing the problem is to use eminent domain to buy land, and building high density housing on it.
Well said. However I think its a false dichotomy. The choice is not between some people unjustly winning and fewer losers. I can create solutions which address both problems, or one or none. All I have to do is to have a little less regard for the property rights of the winners. Since the concept of eminent domain exists, why not use it for the public good as it is used. Instead this time, rather than use it to screw over poor people, we use it to address a serious social problem. Instead of bulldozing slums to build new malls, why not use it to bulldoze luxury housing to build necessary social housing?
I know this view isn’t popular, but Venezuela is a lot more complicated than just naive socialists versus effective capitalists. A hell of a lot of what brought Chavez to power was a response to institutionalized racism. And a hell of a lot of what ails Vene now is sanctions and trade problems imposed from outside. Pretty similar to Cuba. Of course abuse of power by the Chavistas is also part of the problem. But those who didnt visit before Chavez and who are of European descent, might not have noticed how horribly racist a country with only 5% of the population of European descent might be.
If you want an example to use which demonstrates the perils of socialism or socialist attitudes why not use Sweden, Finland, Norway or Denmark? I know several Danes who complain about the inefficiency of their country. However I think a lot of less prosperous Americans might be surprised at how high the standard of living of ordinary Danes is.
Of course, Im quite left wing in my politics. I guess what Im really saying is that markets are constructs and not holy. We dont have to use them all the time and their outcomes are not sacrosanct. Their are market failures and we should address them when they happen.
Sorry for the long winded response.
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