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Medical care and education have seen a massive torrent of government funding and regulation over the last 60 years, while the things that get cheaper live mostl

Medical care and education have seen a massive torrent of government funding and regulation over the last 60 years, while the things that get cheaper live mostly in free markets.

dredmorbius 6y ago
Housing, childcare, textbooks, and food and beverages seem strongly market based, and private college tuition has risen far more than public, challenging your characterisation. I note textbook prices took a dive about the time book-sharing services became prevalent.
- bhupy 6y ago
  In the markets where housing prices have increased the most, housing is the least market based.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    How do you reach that concclusion/ How can a region be tested based on housing-market freeness? Who or what interests advance restrictions?
    - bhupy 6y ago
      It's fairly well established by now that the most significant drivers of housing unaffordability is the preponderance of zoning regulations that restrict the supply of new housing construction. https://www.nber.org/papers/w8835 https://www.nber.org/papers/w8835 https://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/307/ https://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/307/ https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/laissez-faire-in-tokyo.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/la... https://www.nber.org/papers/w20536 https://www.nber.org/papers/w20536 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sHh6BJ8dPoN9VQj-PXTPK5ATa8mL8MP4/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sHh6BJ8dPoN9VQj-PXTPK5ATa8m...
      - dredmorbius 6y ago
        Who or what interests advance restrictions?
        bhupy 6y ago
        Usually local NIMBYs
        dredmorbius 6y ago
        When recently the mechanized industries, particularly in metal, entered the housing field with the production of “prefabricated houses”, they were met by the resistance of property holders, especially of the banks, who hold mortgages on about 58 percent of all 1933 value of all urban real estate, and who fear that an influx of cheap modern dwellings would subtract substantially from the market value of existing structures. These banks and loan companies have been unwilling to finance prefabricated houses except in rare exceptions and then on a limited basis. Lumber companies and manufacturers of other materials which are being displaced in the production of prefabricated houses, have sought to prevent their construction through building-code restrictions and by organizing boycotts by dealers and building crafts. Moral and ethical rationalizations have been used against prefabricated houses.... Planned public housing projects such as slum clearance which afford the most efficient methods of utilizing advanced technologies in the building industry, crash against the wall of vested private-property interest. They meet the combined opposition of the owners of obsolete buildings, that nonetheless are still profitable, of landowners who demand prohibitive prices, of holders of mortgages who fear a depreciation of housing values through the increase in available homes. Achievements in building technology lie sterile in the face of the opposition of these interests. Bernhard J. Stern, "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations", 1937. https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/page/39 https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/pag... This little-known work detail instances and dynamics in which opposition to innovation occurs. As the author notes: "The most potent of the cultural factors are clearly economic: Efforts to maintain economic advantage and hegemony over competing classes, and over competitors in the same industry and rivals in the same market in allied fields."[1] In the case of housing, it is both a financialised asset, of value to present property owners, landlords, banks and financial institutions; and a mode of social and political control, directed against class, race, and ethnic interests: the working class, poor, blacks, immigrants, non-WASPs, etc. The mechanism vary but may include zoning, redlining, availability of mortgages or insurance, restrictive covenants, building codes, leasing limitations, and more.[2] Even non-housing aspects such as transit service, walkability, and bikability impact on this. Housing densities in the US are exceptionally low by European and global standards, even (or especially) within major cities. Unmet need could be met not by creating tower forests but simply through low-rise multi-family dwellings. San Francisco is overwhelmingly three floors or less, with large tracts single or two-storey construction, ground floor often garage. Five-floor structures could readily double available housing. Similar dynamics exist throughout the country. The result is resisted by entrenched economic interests capable of exerting influence, which is to say, suppliers with a capability to restrict supply of a price-inelastic good, and thus, disrupting an otherwise "free market". The perversion is that it's the very mechanisms of markets, property, profit, and accumulation, whichend up distorting them. "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power", wrote Adam Smith. "Markets" in this case eat themselves. ________________________________ Notes: 1. I'd learned of this through the graduate student who'd done literary research on the article, and went on to speak and write about it occasionally, including premising some of his own fictional works off the same principle of resistances to innovation: Isaac Asimov. 2. Regulation and governance mechanisms are not inherently bad. But they're extraordinarily prone to capture.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Private college tuition is as heavily affected by the flood of federal college funding as public colleges. Textbooks are just another way for colleges to ride on the federal gravy train. Housing prices have no where near the same price growth, and last time they did it was also due to heavy federal subsidies. Lastly, Childcare, Food and Beverages? You are grasping at straws there.

Medical care and education have seen a massive torrent of government funding and regulation over the last 60 years, while the things that get cheaper live mostly in free markets.

dredmorbius 6y ago

Housing, childcare, textbooks, and food and beverages seem strongly market based, and private college tuition has risen far more than public, challenging your characterisation. I note textbook prices took a dive about the time book-sharing services became prevalent.

bhupy 6y ago
In the markets where housing prices have increased the most, housing is the least market based.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  How do you reach that concclusion/ How can a region be tested based on housing-market freeness? Who or what interests advance restrictions?
  - bhupy 6y ago
    It's fairly well established by now that the most significant drivers of housing unaffordability is the preponderance of zoning regulations that restrict the supply of new housing construction. https://www.nber.org/papers/w8835 https://www.nber.org/papers/w8835 https://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/307/ https://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/307/ https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/laissez-faire-in-tokyo.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/la... https://www.nber.org/papers/w20536 https://www.nber.org/papers/w20536 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sHh6BJ8dPoN9VQj-PXTPK5ATa8mL8MP4/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sHh6BJ8dPoN9VQj-PXTPK5ATa8m...
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      Who or what interests advance restrictions?
      - bhupy 6y ago
        Usually local NIMBYs
        dredmorbius 6y ago
        When recently the mechanized industries, particularly in metal, entered the housing field with the production of “prefabricated houses”, they were met by the resistance of property holders, especially of the banks, who hold mortgages on about 58 percent of all 1933 value of all urban real estate, and who fear that an influx of cheap modern dwellings would subtract substantially from the market value of existing structures. These banks and loan companies have been unwilling to finance prefabricated houses except in rare exceptions and then on a limited basis. Lumber companies and manufacturers of other materials which are being displaced in the production of prefabricated houses, have sought to prevent their construction through building-code restrictions and by organizing boycotts by dealers and building crafts. Moral and ethical rationalizations have been used against prefabricated houses.... Planned public housing projects such as slum clearance which afford the most efficient methods of utilizing advanced technologies in the building industry, crash against the wall of vested private-property interest. They meet the combined opposition of the owners of obsolete buildings, that nonetheless are still profitable, of landowners who demand prohibitive prices, of holders of mortgages who fear a depreciation of housing values through the increase in available homes. Achievements in building technology lie sterile in the face of the opposition of these interests. Bernhard J. Stern, "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations", 1937. https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/page/39 https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/pag... This little-known work detail instances and dynamics in which opposition to innovation occurs. As the author notes: "The most potent of the cultural factors are clearly economic: Efforts to maintain economic advantage and hegemony over competing classes, and over competitors in the same industry and rivals in the same market in allied fields."[1] In the case of housing, it is both a financialised asset, of value to present property owners, landlords, banks and financial institutions; and a mode of social and political control, directed against class, race, and ethnic interests: the working class, poor, blacks, immigrants, non-WASPs, etc. The mechanism vary but may include zoning, redlining, availability of mortgages or insurance, restrictive covenants, building codes, leasing limitations, and more.[2] Even non-housing aspects such as transit service, walkability, and bikability impact on this. Housing densities in the US are exceptionally low by European and global standards, even (or especially) within major cities. Unmet need could be met not by creating tower forests but simply through low-rise multi-family dwellings. San Francisco is overwhelmingly three floors or less, with large tracts single or two-storey construction, ground floor often garage. Five-floor structures could readily double available housing. Similar dynamics exist throughout the country. The result is resisted by entrenched economic interests capable of exerting influence, which is to say, suppliers with a capability to restrict supply of a price-inelastic good, and thus, disrupting an otherwise "free market". The perversion is that it's the very mechanisms of markets, property, profit, and accumulation, whichend up distorting them. "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power", wrote Adam Smith. "Markets" in this case eat themselves. ________________________________ Notes: 1. I'd learned of this through the graduate student who'd done literary research on the article, and went on to speak and write about it occasionally, including premising some of his own fictional works off the same principle of resistances to innovation: Isaac Asimov. 2. Regulation and governance mechanisms are not inherently bad. But they're extraordinarily prone to capture.
valuearb 6y ago
Private college tuition is as heavily affected by the flood of federal college funding as public colleges. Textbooks are just another way for colleges to ride on the federal gravy train. Housing prices have no where near the same price growth, and last time they did it was also due to heavy federal subsidies. Lastly, Childcare, Food and Beverages? You are grasping at straws there.