Monday, November 30, 2015

Housing can unify us.

I am hoping to be able to package my version of the housing story for a broader audience.  I think there are reasons for optimism here.  People like Matthew Yglesias share the opinion that housing supply is an important problem.  Today, Paul Krugman also has a blog post that expresses solidarity (HT:EV) on this issue.  It is always tempting to be divisive and partisan.  I think the challenge here will be to be radically empathetic, because I think there is a plurality of intelligent people that can recognize the problem if they don't see it as a challenge to their political identity.

I think that if we can solve this problem, we will find that many of the issues we all disagree about will diminish.  To the extent that these are significant issues, the housing supply problem is at the core of the problems of income inequality, high costs, and middle class stagnation.  The solution to this problem is a symbiosis of removing both our supply-side and our demand-side obstacles.  At the heart of the American competitive advantage is that all of the political factions in American politics have one hand on the ideal of liberalism.  Where we can remove political obstacles to progress and equity, all of those factions can view that change as a victory.  This can be a big tent.  It has to be a big tent if we are going to overcome the forces of inertia and economic misunderstanding.

5 comments:

  1. I hope so. Downtown Los Angeles has embraced condo towers. SoCal single-family suburbia? O.C. Beachtowns (where there should be 60-stort condo towers)?

    "Highest and best use" is a term never used even by GOP'ers. The Dems want low-cost housing for the right groups.

    But I wish you luck...except, you see, my neighborhood is special, and the minimum acreage standards extend back generations...

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  2. keep the government's hands off my statutory market power

    ps you're talking about the pieces of an intellectual coalition. that and a dollar gets you.. Krugman and Yglesias are brilliant fellas, but they don't really seem to win many policy outcomes, even in their respective wheelhouses. even Summers and Rohmer want way bigger monetary expansion and can't get it

    which is the easiest realpolitik? easier laws near freeways? rezoning of industrial land held by political weaklings? remodeling of office parks occupied by easily defamed entities? backyard cottages? concentration of development in black/latino neighborhoods? man, the single fams are dug in deep

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    1. I'm not thinking that far ahead. I'm mostly just thinking in terms of some ideas that are now considered laughable possibly being accepted as reasonable. That's a big enough leap, itself. I'll leave realpolitik to others.

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  3. You're right

    As an average brain, I want to note that your blog explains your arguments very convincingly. I think further clarity would call for diagrams to illustrate some causes and effects that are hard to name and subsequently refer to without jargon and diehard commitment from the reader, and some graphs that show not only history as it actually occurred, but as we would expect it to be measured if the prevailing bubble hypotheses were correct

    dude Nietzche was spot-on about people like me. I make suggestions to you as if your duty is to play to the cheap seats, when really we will live and die by the cream of our crop (Fed technocrats, influential academics). please forgive the tendency to want to be a part of thrilling content. Monty Python and the moon landing didn't have public comments sections, and I'm a moth to the light

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    1. Ha! Your comments are all welcome. I find very little correlation between self regard and deserved self regard. I tend to feel the same about myself as you have expressed in this comment about yourself, but when I begin to discuss ideas I am thinking about, I think I tend to project authority, so I don't know whether that means you should trust me or not. As for you, keep sharing your thoughts.

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