The Economy

Gas yesterday was 3.069 at my nearby Chevron and 2.949 at Buc-ees.

 

To paraphrase Lewis Black talking about Atlanta traffic - At a certain point, don't you have to say, "Hey, no more of you fuckers can live here!" Cities are densely packed at least. It's always far more frustrating to me when people move into the suburbs and then immediately complain about the fact that more people want to move there, as if they closed the door to more building after them with their mere presence. Or, to channel another comedian (Carlin), good fuckin' luck if you want to build an apartment building in the last 20 years in any "nice" New England suburb.

 

In the super nice New England suburb where I lived for 30 years, a crotchety old guy about a half-mile down the road sold his extensive (for this town) open land to a developer, who wished to build a series of stand alone two-story townhouses on the property. Oh, the humanity, as one neighbor led a lengthy but futile campaign to block it. Now the homes have been built, maybe 20 families all told live there and the impact on the neighborhood has been nil, except twice a day when about 20 kids get on or off the elementary school bus.

 

This was regular unleaded.

 

Not to sound wishy-washy but there's probably a happy median between Manhattan 1985 and Monaco on Hudson. Corporations and the plutocracy hoovering up apartments as investments or for that much needed fifth home incurs a social cost on everybody else. Inflation as you have to pay more for workers. More cost for public transportation. And decreased office occupancy rates as folks live too far from the city to commute in.

In fact, I'll be even more of a radical centrist and say that rent control is one tool to use here. For older buildings, where the initial investment has been recouped handsomely long ago, I don't see why some mil,d form of it can't be used. After all, this is a situation so screwed that, realisitcally, how could it get worse?

 

"Recouped handsomely long ago" makes no sense. That idea doesn't consider an owner who recently bought the property, the property taxes, the ongoing upkeep and owner is required to provide.

 

If you have the money to buy an apartment building in Manhattan, I'm not really worried about your financial health. You'll do fine. If your business model is centered around above-inflation rent increases every year, I'm especially not worried about you.

Except for the Covid dip, we've been waiting for the free hand of the market to come galloping to the rescue here for a long time now. And even with such huge demand for houses, near historically low intesest rates, actual building starts in the US are anemic. I don't think we're living in the best of all possible worlds here.

 

Actually ... "we" have done no such thing.

 

Government has something to do with how much housing does not get built.