Log in
WASHINGTON, D.C. — An investigation has revealed that Representative Nancy Pelosi purchased $10 million in Taco Bell stock the day before President Trump loosened marijuana regulations.
Everyone used to know about the treacherous pitfalls of listening to jazz music -- how it would lead to a life of sin and debauchery. Somehow, people stopped talking about the dangers of jazz, even though the music never changed.
Adam Lehodey writing at City Journal:
In New York City, making a profit on real estate has become increasingly difficult. Rent-stabilization laws built on the mantra that “housing is a human right,” a dysfunctional housing court, and myriad other interventions have driven thousands of units off the market, giving rise to the phenomenon of New York’s “ghost apartments.”
The city now has nearly 50,000 empty units, absent from the market either because their operating costs exceed legal rents or because they require considerable renovations.
…Take a building on East 6th Street as an example. A mere five-minute walk from Tompkins Square, the building is a convenient home for students and young professionals.
One-bedroom units in the building average $3,500— except two of them, subject to the city’s rent-stabilization laws, which hold rents below $900 per month.
As a result, both units have been allowed to fall into disrepair, because the cost of restoring them to habitability is greater than what they’d generate in rent.
…Much of the predicament at the East 6th Street building and the apartments on Valentine Avenue can be traced back to one piece of legislation: the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act (HSTPA). Passed by a Democratic majority in the state legislature, HSTPA eliminated landlords’ abilities to raise rents after units were vacated, or when they exceeded $2,775 per month. In doing so, it also eliminated their ability to make improvements profitably and reset the stabilized rent.
Recall from the recent review by Kholodilin that “the published studies are almost unanimous with respect to the impact of rent control on the quality of housing….[namely] that rent control leads to a deterioration in the quality of those dwellings subject to regulations.”
The post Rent Control Creates Ghost Apartments appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
1. Henry Oliver’s year in reading.
2. What is the greatest artwork of the century so far? One man’s view.
3. LLMs specific to a historical time period.
4. So is it actually Austro-Japanese business cycle theory?
6. Bhutan Launches Gold-Backed Sovereign Digital Token TER.
7. Hainan as an economic zone.
The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
… is from page 165 of William Easterly’s hot-off-the-press Violent Saviors: The West’s Conquest of the Rest [footnotes deleted]:
He [Frederick Douglass] saw markets offered a crucial alternative to paternalism. A free labor market, Douglass said, would “let us stand upon our own legs, work with our own hands, and eat bread in the sweat of our own brows.” Douglass told white philanthropists that market participation by the former slaves was “the best way to help them,” which “is just to let them help themselves.
DBx: Douglass was correct. Yet today, many well-meaning people – either ignorant of economics or too clever with economics-textbook models and careless with data – support the likes of minimum-wage legislation, occupational licensing, and special privileges for labor unions as means of helping ordinary workers. These people’s tunnel vision allows them to see only the workers who are benefitted by these labor-market restrictions; these people’s tunnel vision blinds them to the workers who are harmed.
The post Quotation of the Day… appeared first on Cafe Hayek.
Next Page of Stories