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one important reason why no one's built middle-class housing in the city for decades You think that the lack of middle-class housing is because of commie lefti

one important reason why no one's built middle-class housing in the city for decades You think that the lack of middle-class housing is because of commie leftists? Really? This makes no economic sense - maybe review some of your logic? I live in NYC, where the lack of middle-class housing is because real estate developers flock towards luxury residential condominiums (oriented towards the upper class), since that's the ideal way to maximize IRR. I would maintain that a healthy regulation of capital usage creates a healthy middle class. I offer you to suggest coherent arguments otherwise.

fennecfoxen 13y ago
> You think that the lack of middle-class housing is because of commie leftists? Really? This makes no economic sense Of course it makes economic sense. Commie leftists empowered by the legislature brought you rent control. Rent control means onerous limitations on what the property-owner can do with the property, directly reducing his ability to earn money off it and reducing the incentives to build new apartments. It's a wealth transfer from landlords to tenants, and no one invests in anything with the goal of having their wealth transferred away. Granted, it's certainly not the only thing that stands in the way of new development (but I already mentioned that). Impeding new development means less housing overall, which in turn means more-expensive housing for everyone. -- But you live in New York. New York City's own flirtations with rent control under the War Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1943 are even better studied. Yes, the war emergency is WWII. Yes, that law still governs rent control in New York. (Yes, the DeBlasio would like to see more rent control in more places in practice, as well). And yes, it was destructive. Hell, it's the textbook case -- literally, dozens of Intro-to-Econ textbooks. At one point in the 1970s the Department of Buildings noted that over one-third of the buildings in Harlem had abandoned by their landlords. You may also be familiar with the Bronx, burning. If the first paragraph by itself is too tendentious for you, I can also offer you information on the consensus of economists. If you think Milton Friedman and Fredrick Hayek are too capitalist, maybe I could quote Gunnar Myrdal -- a chief architect of Sweden's welfare state. "Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by governments lacking courage and vision." Or Assar Lindbeck, noted socialist: "In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing." I will also refer you to papers like Alson, Kearl and Vaughn's "Is There a Consensus Among Economists in the 1990’s?" and Block and Walker's "Entropy in the Canadian Economics Profession: Sampling Consensus on the Major Issues". 93% of the American economists and 95% of Canadian economists endorsed the statement that "a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available." IN SUMMARY. To deny that rent control is destructive is as intelligent and scientific a statement as endorsing homeopathy, saying vaccines cause autism, and that global warming is caused primarily by sunspots: It's a false statement that is at odds with the scientific consensus, and it leads to destructive public policies.
- brenschluss 13y ago
  I appreciate that you took the time to plagarize from http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html, as can be deduced by the fact that you mention Friedman, Hayek, Myrdal, and Lindbeck -- and that the website in question also does the same, in the exact order, with the exact same quotes by Mydral and Lindbeck. Also, the two papers that you refer to are the first two papers in the footnotes of said website. If you're going to offer a rebuttal, may I ask that you perform some original thought, rather than doing a copy-paste from a website? Unless, of course, you are Prof. Block himself.
  - fennecfoxen 13y ago
    No, you may not. First: This is XKCD 386 here. There are limits to how much I care about you. http://xkcd.com/386/ http://xkcd.com/386/ Second: it's a dispute about matters of fact. Originality per se has no meaning here. Accuracy does. Now, what you may ask is that I issue better citations in the future. Of course, in this case a citation is just a courtesy, since we're in an two-bit good-for-nothing zero-impact argument on stinkin' Hacker News which no one will care about in a week. But there's no reason to be discourteous if you can help it. So apologies, Walter.
    - brenschluss 13y ago
      Logic would say that unoriginal direct plagiarism, from a strongly biased source, without referencing the citation in question, is indication of an argument that is actually not very coherent or cogent -- but one that rather parrots certain established mindsets. In other words; your lack of transparency about your citations is a signal that you lack both originality and accuracy. Finally; the page you link to is created/funded by an organization that Al Gore had this to say about: "These groups are not providing unbiased judicial education. They are giving multithousand-dollar vacations to federal judges to promote their radical right-wing agenda at the expense of the public interest."

fennecfoxen 13y ago

> You think that the lack of middle-class housing is because of commie leftists? Really? This makes no economic sense Of course it makes economic sense. Commie leftists empowered by the legislature brought you rent control. Rent control means onerous limitations on what the property-owner can do with the property, directly reducing his ability to earn money off it and reducing the incentives to build new apartments. It's a wealth transfer from landlords to tenants, and no one invests in anything with the goal of having their wealth transferred away. Granted, it's certainly not the only thing that stands in the way of new development (but I already mentioned that). Impeding new development means less housing overall, which in turn means more-expensive housing for everyone. -- But you live in New York. New York City's own flirtations with rent control under the War Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1943 are even better studied. Yes, the war emergency is WWII. Yes, that law still governs rent control in New York. (Yes, the DeBlasio would like to see more rent control in more places in practice, as well). And yes, it was destructive. Hell, it's the textbook case -- literally, dozens of Intro-to-Econ textbooks. At one point in the 1970s the Department of Buildings noted that over one-third of the buildings in Harlem had abandoned by their landlords. You may also be familiar with the Bronx, burning. If the first paragraph by itself is too tendentious for you, I can also offer you information on the consensus of economists. If you think Milton Friedman and Fredrick Hayek are too capitalist, maybe I could quote Gunnar Myrdal -- a chief architect of Sweden's welfare state. "Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by governments lacking courage and vision." Or Assar Lindbeck, noted socialist: "In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing." I will also refer you to papers like Alson, Kearl and Vaughn's "Is There a Consensus Among Economists in the 1990’s?" and Block and Walker's "Entropy in the Canadian Economics Profession: Sampling Consensus on the Major Issues". 93% of the American economists and 95% of Canadian economists endorsed the statement that "a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available." IN SUMMARY. To deny that rent control is destructive is as intelligent and scientific a statement as endorsing homeopathy, saying vaccines cause autism, and that global warming is caused primarily by sunspots: It's a false statement that is at odds with the scientific consensus, and it leads to destructive public policies.

brenschluss 13y ago
I appreciate that you took the time to plagarize from http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html, as can be deduced by the fact that you mention Friedman, Hayek, Myrdal, and Lindbeck -- and that the website in question also does the same, in the exact order, with the exact same quotes by Mydral and Lindbeck. Also, the two papers that you refer to are the first two papers in the footnotes of said website. If you're going to offer a rebuttal, may I ask that you perform some original thought, rather than doing a copy-paste from a website? Unless, of course, you are Prof. Block himself.
- fennecfoxen 13y ago
  No, you may not. First: This is XKCD 386 here. There are limits to how much I care about you. http://xkcd.com/386/ http://xkcd.com/386/ Second: it's a dispute about matters of fact. Originality per se has no meaning here. Accuracy does. Now, what you may ask is that I issue better citations in the future. Of course, in this case a citation is just a courtesy, since we're in an two-bit good-for-nothing zero-impact argument on stinkin' Hacker News which no one will care about in a week. But there's no reason to be discourteous if you can help it. So apologies, Walter.
  - brenschluss 13y ago
    Logic would say that unoriginal direct plagiarism, from a strongly biased source, without referencing the citation in question, is indication of an argument that is actually not very coherent or cogent -- but one that rather parrots certain established mindsets. In other words; your lack of transparency about your citations is a signal that you lack both originality and accuracy. Finally; the page you link to is created/funded by an organization that Al Gore had this to say about: "These groups are not providing unbiased judicial education. They are giving multithousand-dollar vacations to federal judges to promote their radical right-wing agenda at the expense of the public interest."