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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   30500 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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New homes and end to price-gouging: Harris sets economic goals

The Democratic presidential nominee's plans build on ideas from the Biden administration and aim at addressing voter concerns after a surge in prices since 2021.

The campaign's proposals include a "first-ever" tax credit for builders of homes sold to first-time buyers, as well as up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance for "eligible" first time buyers, a move that her campaign estimated could reach four million households over four years.

She has also called for capping the monthly price of diabetes-drug insulin at $35 for everyone, finding ways to cancel medical debt, and giving families a $6,000 tax credit the year they have a new child.

She is supporting a federal law banning firms from charging excessive prices on groceries and urged action on a bill in Congress that would bar property owners from using services that "coordinate" rents.

Though analysts say some of Harris's proposals, such as the ban on price-gouging, are likely to be popular, they have also sparked criticism from some economists. Bans on price-gouging already exist in many states, applied during emergencies such as hurricanes. But economists say the term is difficult to define and widening such rules could end up backfiring, by discouraging firms from making more at times of short supply.

Everyone likes free money, right? Building houses is good, having kids is good, paying less for life saving medications is good, taking power out of large landlords hands is good. But maybe trying to apply emergency price gouging laws to non-emergency situations is not so good. Maybe write a law that you have to lower prices when things are good as quickly as you raised them when they weren't so good. What are Trump's plans?

With populism ascendant in both parties, that cost has not dissuaded Trump's choice for vice president, JD Vance, from backing an even bigger tax credit expansion.

Economists predict that increased drilling would have limited impact given the global nature of energy markets and have warned that Trump's pledge to impose a tax of 10% or more on imports would drive up prices.

We're already producing a boatload of oil, but with russia somewhat out of the picture our european friends might appreciate it. Not sure about bringing down prices though.

What can she promise to boost the supply of housing instead of subsidizing demand? As long as cities have downtowns, you are limited by the driving distance and the quantity of roads and parking downtown.

She can't promise to raze and rebuild the cities with decentralized offices.

She can't promise to found new cities to allow first-time buyers to buy new homes cheaply.

She can't promise to upzone existing suburbs.

Even if she can somehow double the supply of housing, this will destroy housing as an investment. Which is also something people very vocally do not want. It's not like Trump can do anything about housing either. Maybe when the US population finally starts to dip...

She can promise (though not actually deliver) all of those things, but the only one of the three she's likely to want is upzoning existing suburbs (since doing so would encourage movement from deep blue cities to purple suburbs, turning them blue). She won't promise that either because the existing suburban residents don't want it, and she wants their votes.

Obviously she can’t fix local zoning. But if she was interested, she could do a bunch of things that make larger developments cheaper (eg reduce EPA regulations, OHSA, etc)

Are there any carrots or sticks that the federal government can wave in front of state governments to make them change their zoning laws?

They have enormous carrots and sticks that can be applied to Fannie and Freddie's purchases. If there's a condition that the GSEs won't buy mortgages that aren't on properties with certain zoning characteristics, that greatly limits financing options currently!

The big obvious one is boosting or restricting federal funding for related (or unrelated for that matter) stuff, which is how they went about sidestepping the 21st amendment and forcing every individual state to raise their minimum alcohol purchase age to 21.

In that case they withheld federal highway improvement funding on the order of dozens of millions of dollars per state until the state raised their purchase age to 21. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_Act

This is easier to apply to state level than local level obviously, but there are still plenty of federal dollars going to programs carried out at municipal levels. In fact such programs are probably concentrated in the unaffordable cities.

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