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Most of your cause and effect here is correct. I think, The reason you're being down voted is probably because you said it was silly to complain about housing

Most of your cause and effect here is correct. I think, The reason you're being down voted is probably because you said it was silly to complain about housing prices. yes, there are many many political problems that cause high housing prices. But, there's still many victims of those housing prices/policies that didn't have anything to do with creating those egregious policies

olfactory 8y ago
Ahh. Well, if you consider price a function of supply and demand, then complaining about a price is likely actually a complaint about supply or about demand. If I say "Wow, the price of a Tesla Model S is too high", I am implicitly saying either "I wish demand for the Model S suddenly fell, leading to a large price drop on existing units" or "I wish a lot more Model S sedans magically got manufactured so that the profit margin available to Tesla on the units sold would be reduced to the point where I could afford one". Both of those sentiments are fairly silly wishthink. Similarly, so is the sentiment that "Regulators should pass a law requiring all new Model S vehicles to be sold for $20K". I could define myself as being a victim of the over priced Model S, or I could define myself as being the victim of insufficient wages to afford one at the actual retail price. I'm not sure why in the case of housing it seems logical to blame the price of the housing instead of blaming the wages that make some standard of living difficult to afford. For some people, even "affordable" things like community college or McDonalds food is expensive and out of reach. So why not focus on how McDonalds is not "affordable". One reason why McDonalds is affordable to many is because of the existence of other competitors. My comment above meant to point out that there are many, many ways in which the regulatory landscape limits the number of competitors each landlord faces, driving up prices.

olfactory 8y ago

Ahh. Well, if you consider price a function of supply and demand, then complaining about a price is likely actually a complaint about supply or about demand. If I say "Wow, the price of a Tesla Model S is too high", I am implicitly saying either "I wish demand for the Model S suddenly fell, leading to a large price drop on existing units" or "I wish a lot more Model S sedans magically got manufactured so that the profit margin available to Tesla on the units sold would be reduced to the point where I could afford one". Both of those sentiments are fairly silly wishthink. Similarly, so is the sentiment that "Regulators should pass a law requiring all new Model S vehicles to be sold for $20K". I could define myself as being a victim of the over priced Model S, or I could define myself as being the victim of insufficient wages to afford one at the actual retail price. I'm not sure why in the case of housing it seems logical to blame the price of the housing instead of blaming the wages that make some standard of living difficult to afford. For some people, even "affordable" things like community college or McDonalds food is expensive and out of reach. So why not focus on how McDonalds is not "affordable". One reason why McDonalds is affordable to many is because of the existence of other competitors. My comment above meant to point out that there are many, many ways in which the regulatory landscape limits the number of competitors each landlord faces, driving up prices.