Contra J.D. Vance and Tim Walz, Housing Should Be a ‘Commodity’

“The most generic definition of a commodity is something of value that’s bought and sold. A not insignificant segment of the left uses this generic definition when they say we should “decommodify” housing—it should not be something that’s bought and sold like a normal product.
Hear Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) decry the “privatization” of real estate development at a recent event promoting her Homes Act. That bill, jointly authored with Sen. Tina Smith (D–Minn.), would get the federal government back into the business of building and operating public housing units.

Their debate remarks notwithstanding, there’s no indication that Vance and Walz want to go so far as to completely end private housing markets.

Rather, they want to stop certain types of people from buying and selling housing—corporate speculators in Walz’s case, illegal immigrants in Vance’s. (In past remarks, Vance has also said we should squeeze corporate investors out of the housing market.) Once we get rid of the demand of Wall Street and illegal immigrants for housing, there’ll be more left for normal, decent Americans, the thinking goes.

As I wrote on Tuesday, that’s a mistaken attitude. There’s plenty of evidence that corporate investors and immigrants lower the cost of housing. The former provides the capital, the latter the labor, to get needed housing built.

There’s also no reason to think that a free market would transmute rising demand into ever higher prices. There’s not some fixed number of housing units. Increased demand might raise prices in the short run. But higher prices also encourage more homebuilding. That brings prices back down.

If it was profitable for developers to sell homes at $300,000 a unit and then more immigrants or speculators swoop in and buy houses, pushing the price up to $400,000, developers will respond by building more housing until the price falls back down to $300,000. If they were making money producing homes at that price, there’s no reason they’d suddenly stop just because demand increased.

Over time, capitalist innovation will lower production costs such that more and more housing is available at a lower price. This is what it actually means to make something into a “commodity” and we see examples of it everywhere in the economy.

There are more people and more demand than ever. Yet, somehow the price of common commodities and mass-produced consumer products keeps falling.

Real prices falling in the face of ever-rising demand is what it actually means to “commodify” something.”

“With zoning codes limiting how much new housing can be built at one time, the size of home-building firms has fallen, reducing economies of scale and construction productivity. Building codes dictating how homes have to be built has further helped to close off innovative construction methods.

Those regulatory restrictions on new supply never went away, with the result being that the price of housing has risen in tandem with rising demand. Additionally, new technology that promised to automate construction tasks has repeatedly failed to take off.

Rather than becoming a commodity, home-building has stayed a cottage industry (no pun intended). Real prices continue to rise and housing affordability has become an issue of national concern debated by candidates for federal office.

In this context, Walz and Vance have decided to double down on the zero-sum nature of the housing market. They say we need to decommodify housing by preventing the wrong people from buying a fixed stock of housing.

This is exactly backwards. Housing supply is fixed by regulation, not nature. If we stripped away regulations on homebuilding, supply would rise and prices would fall.

We’ve failed to make housing a commodity and that’s exactly the problem.”

https://reason.com/2024/10/03/contra-j-d-vance-and-tim-walz-housing-should-be-a-commodity/

This Election Has Been Defined by Presidential Policy Pandering

“In June, former President Trump traveled to Las Vegas where he unexpectedly revealed a new tax idea: no taxes on tips. Why was Trump suddenly so keen on eliminating taxes on tipped earnings? Because he was trying to win the electorally important state of Nevada, which is home to a large number of Las Vegas-area service workers who rely heavily on tips for income.
This wasn’t a policy that fit into some broader framework or comprehensive theory of how taxes should work. It was an idea, floated in the middle of a rambling speech, targeting a specific, electorally important group, and offering them a benefit through the tax code.

Trump didn’t even try to pretend otherwise. At the June rally, he announced the plan, saying, “for those hotel workers and people that get tips you’re going to be very happy because when I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips people (are) making.”

There’s a word for this: pandering. And it has defined many policy proposals from both the Trump and Harris campaigns this year.”

“Pandering is hardly new in politics or policy. Politicians have long sought to win constituencies and placate voters with narrowly targeted policies designed to address specific concerns. All politicians pander to some extent.

But in the past, pandering has at least sometimes been a voter outreach tool for politicians with bigger ambitions and clearer visions they intend to pursue. In 2024, there’s hardly anything else in play. The campaign agendas are barely more than marketing one-sheets: half-baked promises to sell to voters with the details to come later. The pandering is the point. ”

https://reason.com/2024/10/29/this-election-has-been-defined-by-presidential-policy-pandering/

Increase in Tariffs Would Trigger Global Economic Decline, Study Finds

“When asked why Harris has not distinguished herself by opposing these measures, Lincicome notes that supporting tariffs is just part of the “conventional wisdom in Washington today” even if polls may not completely support this assertion. “The view among the political experts is that elections are won or lost in a few places with a few votes,” and those critical “voters like tariffs.”
Given the IMF’s projections, bipartisan support for tariffs could lead to increased costs and slower economic growth for Americans regardless of who wins in November. ”

“former President Donald Trump floated a specific 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods alongside a 10 percent across-the-board tariff, which he recently increased to 20 percent. “It’s just what he thinks galvanized an audience,” Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics and Stiefel Trade Policy Center at the Cato Institute, tells Reason. “Let’s face it, none of this has any rigorous econometric modeling behind it, so it could be as simple as he thinks 20 percent sounds better.”

“Taking the candidates at their word, you would have to say that Trump’s tariffs would be orders of magnitude worse than what Kamala Harris might do, or say she will do,” Lincicome adds.”

https://reason.com/2024/10/29/increase-in-tariffs-would-trigger-global-economic-decline-study-finds/

The US Navy is battling ‘the best Iranian technology’ in the Red Sea and changing how it fights to beat it, admiral says

“The US Navy has been battling the Houthis and some of Iran’s best weaponry in the Red Sea and changing some of the ways it fights to defeat them, America’s top naval officer said this week.
Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the chief of naval operations, said this week that the Navy is taking away many lessons from its almost yearlong fight against the Houthis, including the fact that drones are fundamentally changing warfare.

The Houthis, a Yemen-based rebel group that Iran has armed and supported for years, have used aerial and surface drones to attack key merchant shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and threaten US Navy ships since last fall. The militants have also fired anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles at vessels.

US warships and aircraft, in partnership with allies, have been intercepting these threats. Just last week, American forces engaged a number of Houthi drones and missiles.

“We’re continuing to learn,” Franchetti responded to questions at a Wednesday Defense Writers Group event. “And again, I’ll just go back to the changing tactics, techniques and procedures based on adversaries.”

“The Houthis are using the best Iranian technology, and we know that we need to be able to defeat that,” she added. “And again, our ships are doing an amazing job. And our aircraft.””

“In this fight, the Navy has fired well over $1.1 billion worth of munitions fighting the Houthis, a figure that covers hundreds of air-launched weapons and ship-fired missiles that have been used to take out rebel weaponry, both missiles and drones.

The increasing use of unmanned systems, such as aerial strike platforms and naval drones, has been seen in other conflicts, most notably the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine, for instance, has built up a formidable arsenal of domestically produced naval drones and has used these systems to target Russian warships and ports around the Black Sea. Even though Kyiv lacks a proper navy, it has demonstrated it can still cause problems through this asymmetrical style of warfare.

“I think Ukraine has shown us that you can innovate on the battlefield,” Franchetti said. “I want to innovate before the battlefield so we can stay ahead of any adversary any time.””

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-navy-battling-best-iranian-144356571.html

Judge Stops California Law Targeting Election Misinformation

“The law, Assembly Bill 2839 makes it illegal for an individual to produce “knowingly distributing an advertisement or other election communication, as defined, that contains certain materially deceptive content,” within 120 days of an election and up to 60 days after. Affected candidates can file for a civil action enjoining distribution of the media, and seek damages from its creator.”

“content creator Christopher Kohls filed a lawsuit arguing the law was overbroad, violating his First Amendment rights to make parody content. Kohls has a YouTube channel with more than 300,000 subscribers, and his videos often consist of political parodies featuring political candidates seemingly mocking themselves.”

“Judge John A. Mendes, a judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, sided with Kohls, ruling that the law doesn’t pass constitutional muster because it does not use “the least restrictive means available for advancing the State’s interest.”
“Counter speech is a less restrictive alternative to prohibiting videos such as those posted by Plaintiff, no matter how offensive or inappropriate someone may find them,” Mendez’s opinion reads. “AB 2839 is unconstitutional because it lacks the narrow tailoring and least restrictive alternative that a content based law requires under strict scrutiny.”

Mendez’s ruling argues that the law, which is aimed at cracking down on “deepfakes” and other forms of false speech intended at misrepresenting an opponent’s views and actions, ends up making illegal a much wider range of speech than these specific statements.

“While Defendants attempt to analogize AB 2839 to a restriction on defamatory statements, the statute itself does not use the word ‘defamation’ and by its own definition, extends beyond the legal standard for defamation to include any false or materially deceptive content that is ‘reasonably likely’ to harm the ‘reputation or electoral prospects of a candidate.'”

While the law did contain a provision exempting parody content that contains a disclosure, the requirement was onerous, mandating that it be “no smaller than the largest font size of other text appearing in the visual media.”

Just one part of the law was found to pass constitutional muster—a requirement audio-only media be disclosed at the beginning at the message, and every two minutes during the duration of the content.

“While the Court gives substantial weight to the fact that the California Legislature has a ‘compelling interest in protecting free and fair elections,’ this interest must be served by narrowly tailored ends.” Mendez writes. “Supreme Court precedent illuminates that while a wellfounded fear of a digitally manipulated media landscape may be justified, this fear does not give legislators unbridled license to bulldoze over the longstanding tradition of critique, parody, and satire protected by the First Amendment.””

https://reason.com/2024/10/03/judge-stops-california-law-targeting-election-misinformation/