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> However, rent control is fundamentally about providing stability and security for existing tenants. I get this, but lets also be honest that we're trading of

> However, rent control is fundamentally about providing stability and security for existing tenants. I get this, but lets also be honest that we're trading off this stability against rental quantity and quality. And while this stability can be good like when is able to afford to live in a neighborhood they have deep roots in. But it can also be bad like when someone really wants to move neighborhoods but can't afford to due to rent control.

wahern 6y ago
Sure. I like to conceive of rent control as a tax on the young and mobile for the benefit of families and seniors. It's redistributive. And one question that we normally would like to answer is whether the whole is better off on average with the scheme than without it. But answering that is difficult; heck, even formulating the question is contentious. Are we better off with our military budget being so high? Why aren't many (or any?) budding economics Ph.Ds writing thesis papers quantifying inefficiencies in strategic military spending? Perhaps because they understand that to answer such questions you have to quantify both the costs and the benefits; but quantifying the benefits is intractable and/or just plain futile. It requires establishing a set of criteria as a proxy for the "benefit", and good luck getting people to accept those criteria when it came time to act on your policy proposals. And to be at all persuasive you often need to establish and analyze a bunch of counterfactuals, which is similarly problematic. Any policy conclusion is necessarily built on sand. This is fundamentally why politics isn't just some subset of economics or accounting. For sure there are ways to apply economics to improve efficiencies, but they're quite distinct from approaches that attempt to answer whether defense spending is, in the abstract, worthwhile, or what the optimal expenditure is. All that said, certainly the less that a policy domain is amenable to rigorous quantification, the less accountable are voters and politicians. And rent control can often be used as an excuse to avoid facing hard choices about reducing housing supply costs, such as addressing restrictive zoning issues. But that's the nature of politics. One group is anxious about housing or other economic security. Another group is fearful of a Marxist policy dystopia unhinged from market price signaling. It's the same basic story over and over again.
- JAlexoid 6y ago
  > I like to conceive of rent control as a tax on the young and mobile for the benefit of families and seniors. DING! DING! DING! There you go! You got it exactly right.... It's a tax on people who are less wealthy, to support wealthier(on average) people.

wahern 6y ago

Sure. I like to conceive of rent control as a tax on the young and mobile for the benefit of families and seniors. It's redistributive. And one question that we normally would like to answer is whether the whole is better off on average with the scheme than without it. But answering that is difficult; heck, even formulating the question is contentious. Are we better off with our military budget being so high? Why aren't many (or any?) budding economics Ph.Ds writing thesis papers quantifying inefficiencies in strategic military spending? Perhaps because they understand that to answer such questions you have to quantify both the costs and the benefits; but quantifying the benefits is intractable and/or just plain futile. It requires establishing a set of criteria as a proxy for the "benefit", and good luck getting people to accept those criteria when it came time to act on your policy proposals. And to be at all persuasive you often need to establish and analyze a bunch of counterfactuals, which is similarly problematic. Any policy conclusion is necessarily built on sand. This is fundamentally why politics isn't just some subset of economics or accounting. For sure there are ways to apply economics to improve efficiencies, but they're quite distinct from approaches that attempt to answer whether defense spending is, in the abstract, worthwhile, or what the optimal expenditure is. All that said, certainly the less that a policy domain is amenable to rigorous quantification, the less accountable are voters and politicians. And rent control can often be used as an excuse to avoid facing hard choices about reducing housing supply costs, such as addressing restrictive zoning issues. But that's the nature of politics. One group is anxious about housing or other economic security. Another group is fearful of a Marxist policy dystopia unhinged from market price signaling. It's the same basic story over and over again.

JAlexoid 6y ago
> I like to conceive of rent control as a tax on the young and mobile for the benefit of families and seniors. DING! DING! DING! There you go! You got it exactly right.... It's a tax on people who are less wealthy, to support wealthier(on average) people.