It’s not a straw man if I don’t argue against the point. It’s just me teasing you
What’s the point? Seriously.
This is one of those weird pieces of economic theory that all the neoclassical people act like is settled science despite a long history of good faith studies and publications casting serious doubt.
Most rightwing publications nowdays parrot largely debunked austrian school nonsense as if other countries housing policies don’t exist, or as if the ability of landlords to profit is more important than keeping people in their homes.
The point was to make a quick joke and introduce some levity.
Schools of economic theory no longer exist, in practice - though, post-covid, some new divisions are beginning to arise. Where they aren’t arising is in the efficacy of rent control.
Rent control criticisms aren’t “Austrian school” - they’re just economic orthodoxy. We have tons of data, we’ve seen the impacts.
In my experience, people mostly argue their support rent control emotionally. They assume that wanting to do away with rent control means lack of empathy for the poor or not wanting the government to assist the poor in being housed, which is the exact opposite of how critics of rent control actually feel.
I want people housed and fed. I support initiatives that work, like just giving poor people cash. Our disagreement is in how effective different programs are, which is why I don’t understand the hostility.
I responded to the hostility with a light joke, in an effort to defuse it. You don’t need to agree with me, and you’re free to hold a counter-opinion, but calling me a “piss drinker” is absurd, so you get some absurdity as a response.
Given that you claim schools of economic theory no longer exist, hypotheticals should prove useful (this is a silly thing to say).
Let’s say you do ascribe to the theory that UBI under democratic socialism is an effective means of decreasing human suffering. What would stop landlords from simply increasing rents in proportion to incomes, as they are seen to do in places like SF, LA, and Seattle for example?
A policy reccomendation like a land value tax is something I think may possibly enable said ideological position, but you don’t appear to be advocating for that.
Also, claiming that critics of rent control universally “feel” bad for the people they are rent seeking from is a strange position.
Opponents of rent control include the most dastardly machinations of corporate rent seeking. Opponents of rent control include real estate speculators who benefit from ever increasing property values due to artificial scarcity. Opponents of rent control include bloodthirsty businessmen who seek to pay unlivable wages lest the poorest worker be made homeless by the reserve army of labor.
Rent control makes it such that the only way a developer may increase their profits is to build more housing, a thing I believe you want to have happen.
You claim to talk about economic orthodoxy, yet you haven’t even read Adam Smith?
There is a real difference between classical economics and neoclassical economics, and the disagreements between Smith and modern economists is one of the best examples of this contradiction.
So what gives? Where’s the piss?
To quote the economist J.W mason from this article (its not dense like the smith quote, I swear) from 2019… In direct response to articles like the ones you quoted from the 70s and the 90s.
https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control/
Among economists, rent regulation seems be in similar situation as the minimum wage was 20 years ago. At that time, most economists took it for granted that raising the minimum wage would reduce employment. Textbooks said that it was simple supply and demand — if you raise the price of something, people will buy less of it. But as more state and local governments raised minimum wages, it turned out to be very hard to find any negative effect on employment. This was confirmed by more and more careful empirical studies. Today, it is clear that minimum wages do not reduce employment. And as economists have worked to understand why not, this has improved our theories of the labor market. Rent regulation may be going through a similar evolution today. You may still see textbooks saying that as a price control, rent regulation will reduce the supply of housing. But as the share of Americans renting their homes has increased, more and more jurisdictions are considering or implementing rent regulation. This has brought new attention from economists, and as with the minimum wage, we are finding that the simple supply-and-demand story doesn’t capture what happens in the real world. A number of recent studies have looked at the effects of rent regulations on housing supply, focusing on changes in rent regulations in New Jersey and California and the elimination of rent control in Massachusetts. Contrary to the predictions of the simple supply-and-demand model, none of these studies have found evidence that introducing or strengthening rent regulations reduces new housing construction, or that eliminating rent regulation increases construction. Most of these studies do, however, find that rent control is effective at holding down rents.
EDIT_01: also, the hostility is because not everybody is a bystander in arguments like this. Some people are forced to live a grusome and crushing existence under our system of landlords rights to profit over peoples right to live.
EDIT_02: typos, apologies
