Biden is going to announce a national rent cap. 😂
It’s like no one in that admin ever took a basic Econ course. Either that or at this point they’re just throwing populist crap at the wall trying to win votes.
Absurd.
@Smersh Every time someone suggests doing _anything_ that will help people who are struggling with rent or health care or safety, we're told that it is naive or "against economics 101" for that to happen.
Why?
Why do you think rent control is bad? I'm not saying it's good. I'm just wondering why everyone is so well-trained to assume that anything that might _help_ someone is the province of the naive, who "don't know how the economy works."
@Smersh
I know how our economy works. It creates artificial scarcity to enforce control and slavery so an elite can benefit. Do we like that?
@AskTheDevil yes. Thus why creating even more artificial scarcity is stupid.
Rent control literally leads to higher rents, this has been shown time and again. The only solution to lower rents is to increase supply of housing.
@Smersh If rent control leads to higher rents because teh rental market starts jacking up prices for everyone, I don't think the problem is rent control, I think it's that we act like if it's capitalism, it gets a pass from morality, ethics, cost...
I'm not married to rent control. What would you suggest we do to fix the problem?
@Smersh Artificial scarcity indeed. I frequently, and have recently I'm sure, mentioned that we have _seven_ times the number of empty houses in the US as we have homeless families.
There is no scarcity of housing. There is a scarcity of being able to afford housing. People are spending money on rent that they might once have put away for retirement or property of their own. We're being bled.
That's not because rent control. It's because greed. Because houses aren't homes, they're investment.
@Smersh If our family loses one social security check or wage, the rest of us are out on the street right now. We've skated on fumes for some years now. Fixed incomes, rising costs.
We already won't be able to afford the rent increase where we are, and everywhere else is more expensive.
So what are we going to do to keep families like mine off the street? Right now. This year?
And please don't say homeless shelters, or I'm staying on your couch.
@AskTheDevil if you can't afford to live where you are and your local government won't allow you all to build enough housing to live -- move. It's what Americans, the world and our ancestors have done for decades, centuries and millennia to survive.
The government's role in housing is to enforce property rights, ensure the structure is safe enough to not become a public burden w/ the least impact and get out of the way so people and orgs can build homes for people.