A story just released about housing costs--Housing Prices High for Low Income Workers
Well, aside from the obvious stupidity of the title--"Expensive Things Harder for Poor People to Afford"--there's the whole angle of the story that suggests that housing prices are somehow unrelated to anything else in the economy.
One reason house prices have continued to stay so high is that there has been ever-increasing pressure from loudmouth busybodies who already HAVE a place to live that we need to stop "suburban sprawl." At one time this was limited to the usual places, but the idea has begun to take root in places much less constrained by geography or politics.
Folks, you can't have it both ways--if your population is increasing, and you place increasingly stringent limits on land development (and that's not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself), it IS going to have an effect by making a commodity more scarce. Scarceness equates to higher prices. That's just the way it works. You can do two things--allow the market to meet the demand, or take some more money away from taxpayers and give it away to guarantee people the right to own spiffy townhomes in trendy neighborhoods.
Just remember in the words of that great American economist P.J. O'Rourke, "You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money."
Posted by Terry Oglesby at August 9, 2005 08:59 AM