Supply

The Revenge of Supply, at Project Syndicate

Surging inflation, skyrocketing energy prices, production bottlenecks, shortages, plumbers who won’t return your calls – economic orthodoxy has just run smack into a wall of reality called “supply.” 

Demand matters too, of course. If people wanted to buy half as much as they do, today’s bottlenecks and shortages would not be happening. But the US Federal Reserve and Treasury have printed trillions of new dollars and sent checks to just about every American. Inflation should not have been terribly hard to foresee; and yet it has caught the Fed completely by surprise. 

The Fed’s excuse is that the supply shocks are transient symptoms of pent-up demand. But the Fed’s job is – or at least should be – to calibrate how much supply the economy can offer, and then adjust demand to that level and no more. Being surprised by a supply issue is like the Army being surprised by an invasion. 

The current crunch should change ideas. Renewed respect may come to the real-business-cycle school, which focuses precisely on supply constraints and warns against death by a thousand cuts from supply inefficiencies. Arthur Laffer, whose eponymous curve announced that lower marginal tax rates stimulate growth, ought to be chuckling at the record-breaking revenues that corporate taxes are bringing in this year. 

Equally, one hopes that we will hear no more from Modern Monetary Theory, whose proponents advocate that the government print money and send it to people. They proclaimed that inflation would not follow, because, as Stephanie Kelton puts it in The Deficit Myth, “there is always slack” in our economy. It is hard to ask for a clearer test. 

But the US shouldn’t be in a supply crunch. Real (inflation-adjusted) per capita US GDP just barely passed its pre-pandemic level this last quarter, and overall employment is still five million below its previous peak. Why is the supply capacity of the US economy so low? Evidently, there is a lot of sand in the gears. Consequently, the economic-policy task has been upended – or, rather, reoriented to where it should have been all along: focused on reducing supply-side inefficiencies. 

One underlying problem today is the intersection of labor shortages and Americans who are not even looking for jobs. Although there are more than ten million listed job openings – three million more than the pre-pandemic peak – only six million people are looking for work. All told, the number of people working or looking for work has fallen by three million, from a steady 63% of the working-age population to just 61.6%. 

We know two things about human behavior: First, if people have more money, they work less. Lottery winners tend to quit their jobs. Second, if the rewards of working are greater, people work more. Our current policies offer a double whammy: more money, but much of it will be taken away if one works. Last summer, it became clear to everyone that people receiving more benefits while unemployed than they would earn from working would not return to the labor market. That problem remains with us and is getting worse. 

Remember when commentators warned a few years ago that we would need to send basic-income checks to truck drivers whose jobs would soon be eliminated by artificial intelligence? Well, we started sending people checks, and now we are surprised to find that there is a truck driver shortage. 

Practically every policy on the current agenda compounds this disincentive, adding to the supply constraints. Consider childcare as one tiny example among thousands. Childcare costs have been proclaimed the latest “crisis,” and the “Build Back Better” bill proposes a new open-ended entitlement. Yes, entitlement: “every family who applies for assistance … shall be offered child care assistance” no matter the cost. 

The bill explodes costs and disincentives. It stipulates that childcare workers must be paid at least as much as elementary school teachers ($63,930), rather than the current average ($25,510). Providers must be licensed. Families pay a fixed and rising fraction of family income. If families earn more money, benefits are reduced. If a couple marries, they pay a higher rate, based on combined income. With payments proclaimed as a fraction of income and the government picking up the rest, either prices will explode or price controls must swiftly follow. Adding to the absurdity, the proposed legislation requires states to implement a “tiered system” of “quality,” but grants everyone the right to a top-tier placement. And this is just one tiny element of a huge bill. 

Or consider climate policy, which is heading for a rude awakening this winter. This, too, was foreseeable. The current policy focus is on killing off fossil-fuel supply before reliable alternatives are ready at scale. Quiz: If you reduce supply, do prices go up or go down? Europeans facing surging energy prices this fall have just found out. 

In the United States, policymakers have devised a “whole-of-government” approach to strangle fossil fuels, while repeating the mantra that “climate risk” is threatening fossil-fuel companies with bankruptcy due to low prices. We shall see if the facts shame anyone here. Pleading for OPEC and Russia to open the spigots that we have closed will only go so far. 

Last week, the International Energy Agency declared that current climate pledges will “create” 13 million new jobs, and that this figure would double in a “Net-Zero Scenario.” But we’re in a labor shortage. If you can’t hire truckers to unload ships, where are these 13 million new workers going to come from, and who is going to do the jobs that they were previously doing? Sooner or later, we have to realize it’s not 1933 anymore, and using more workers to provide the same energy is a cost, not a benefit. 

It is time to unlock the supply shackles that our governments have created. Government policy prevents people from building more housing. Occupational licenses reduce supply. Labor legislation reduces supply and opportunity, for example, laws requiring that Uber drivers be categorized as employees rather than independent contractors. The infrastructure problem is not money, it is that law and regulation have made infrastructure absurdly expensive, if it can be built at all. Subways now cost more than a billion dollars per mile. Contracting rules, mandates to pay union wages, “buy American” provisions, and suits filed under environmental pretexts gum up the works and reduce supply. We bemoan a labor shortage, yet thousands of would-be immigrants are desperate to come to our shores to work, pay taxes, and get our economy going. 

A supply crunch with inflation is a great wake-up call. Supply, and efficiency, must now top our economic-policy priorities.

*********

Update: I am vaguely aware of many regulations causing port bottlenecks, including union work rules, rules against trucks parking and idling, overtime rules, and so on. But it turns out a crucial bottleneck in the port of LA is... Zoning laws! By zoning law you're not allowed to stack empty containers more than two high, so there is nowhere to leave them but on the truck, which then can't take a full container. The tweet thread is really interesting for suggesting the ports are at a standstill, bottled up FUBARed and SNAFUed, not running full steam but just can't handle the goods. 

Disclaimer: To my economist friends, yes, using the word "supply" here is not really accurate. "Aggregate supply" is different from the supply of an individual good. Supply of one good increases when its price rises relative to other prices. "Aggregate supply" is the supply of all goods when prices and wages rise together, a much trickier and different concept. What I mean, of course, is something like "the amount produced by the general equilibrium functioning of the economy, supply and demand, in the absence of whatever frictions we call low 'aggregate demand', but as reduced by taxes, regulations, and other market distortions." That being too much of a mouthful, and popular writing using the word "supply" and "supply-side" for this concept, I did not try to bend language towards something more accurate. 

"Non-profit" housing at NYT

Every now and then the old New York Times resurfaces, with detailed reporting, actual facts, whether or not they support The Narrative. Such is the case with an article I recommend, Housing Boss Earns $1 Million to Run Shelters Despite a Troubled Past, by Amy Julia Harris

Since 2017, ... the city has awarded more than $352 million to a nonprofit run by Mr. [Jack A.] Brown to operate shelters. The money is meant to help homeless people regain their footing in life, but it has benefited Mr. Brown, too.

The nonprofit has channeled contracts worth at least $32 million into for-profit companies tied to Mr. Brown, allowing him to earn more than $1 million a year, The New York Times found. Millions more have gone to real estate companies in which he has an ownership interest. 

...In addition to serving as the chief executive of the nonprofit he founded, CORE Services Group, Mr. Brown started a security guard company that polices his shelters, a maintenance company that makes repairs in them and a catering company that feeds the residents, records showed. Mr. Brown heads each of them, collecting total compensation that tops $1 million. He is the highest-paid shelter operator in New York, according to a review of available records.

Mr. Brown, 53, has profited in other ways: Along with partners, he owns two companies that have rented buildings to CORE, and his mother, sister, aunt and niece have all worked at the nonprofit, in addition to his brother, who has collected a six-figure salary.

At the same time, residents at one of the largest shelters in Mr. Brown’s operation, Beach House in Queens, said they lived with vermin infestations, creeping mold and violent fights in the hallways.

The last part of the article goes on about Mr. Brown. I have to say I admire the man's cleverness. He starts and closes companies with alacrity, always one step ahead. 

I am reminded of the famous railroad robber barons, like the one whose name adorns my university, who ran railroads that received massive federal subsidies, but also ran construction companies hired by the railroads to do the work. That's where they made their money, and economic historians still haven't untangled the web. 

But Mr. Brown is not a lone individual, he's just the human face of the story. As the article makes clear, this is the systematic pattern in the business: 

An investigation by The Times, based on hundreds of pages of legal filings, business records and tax documents, as well as interviews with homeless people, city officials and shelter employees, found that under the cloak of charity, executives at nonprofits have collected large salaries, spent their budgets on companies that they or their families controlled and installed relatives in high-paying jobs.

One landlord started a nonprofit that handed out millions of dollars to real estate and maintenance companies that he and his family owned. A Bronx shelter operator was charged earlier this year with laundering kickbacks through a consulting company run by his family. A former board member of another homelessness organization is under criminal investigation after the city said the group paid millions of dollars to a web of for-profit entities he secretly oversaw.

Now, perhaps the gloss of blaming problems in well-meaning programs on malfeasant individuals got this past the the Times' editors. But ponder just how much this story undermines the Standard Progressive Narrative. Most of all, it is these days fashionable to view "for profit" companies as evil, and "non-profits" as morally and ethically superior. 

For example,  

When Mayor Bill de Blasio came into office, he criticized a small group of landlords for charging the city exorbitant rates to house people in squalid rooms while doing little to curb homelessness. In 2017, the mayor pledged to open dozens of new shelters that would be managed by nonprofit groups. Their mission, he said, would be altruistic rather than driven by financial gain.

You only have to read a little between the lines that the whole system of city grants to "non-profits" is completely and inherently corrupt.  Non-profit means a) tax exemption b) no pesky shareholders to ask questions and unseat bad management. Alas, the desire for gain remains in the human spirit. The war on for-profit universities has a similar tone.  

...This year, the city has directed $2.6 billion to nonprofits to operate homeless shelters, and officials already know they have a problem with some of them.

...About 77,000 homeless people live in New York City, 

$2.6b/77k = $34,000. (The right number should be the number in this housing, which the article does not give.) Well, that's better than San Francisco, where we add a zero.  

Hope for California -- housing edition

 California has at last passed the first laws overturning some residential zoning restrictions. WSJ coverage here.  

From the California YIMBY press release, 

“The end of exclusionary, single-unit zoning in California is a historic moment -- we’ve taken a huge step toward making California a more affordable, equitable, and inclusive state.”

...SB 9 ... makes it legal to build duplexes on lots zoned for one house statewide; the law also allows property owners to split their lots into two separate parcels. ...SB 10 ... makes it easier for cities to approve zoning changes for small apartments in neighborhoods currently zoned for single houses.

OK, from WSJ, not yet Libertarian Nirvana, 

The law has provisions to prevent the displacement of renters and protect homes in historic districts and fire-prone areas.

And why just two? If you want density how about apartments? But sometimes silence is golden: 

Affordable housing advocates also criticized the legislation for not containing provisions that mandate any new homes that are built be affordable.

OK, this is only a small step. California has a huge set of laws and regulations in the way of sensible housing and driving up prices. (Lee Ohanian has a great summary here). But it is noteworthy because California is a one-party progressive state. One expects more and more limitations, with the "affordability crisis" addressed by demands for "affordable" housing, i.e. tiny amounts of absurdly overpriced government-provided houses, or mandates imposed on the few developments allowed to proceed, and then handed out to people on long waiting lists, not young people who want to move to good jobs.   The idea that the way to bring down housing costs is simply to... allow people to build houses, and sell them, is remarkable here. Emphasis on allow, a new concept to the progressive narrative here in California. Not "we," the government,  or "I" the governor "will build housing," but we will allow people including people organized into businesses known as "corporations" and "developers" to build housing. That is truly a major conceptual leap.

This event offers a ray of hope for reform of this dysfunctional state. (I'm in a look for the ray of hope mood this morning.) In a one-party state, issues are discussed within the Party, and coalitions form. It is possible for common sense to prevail. Issues do not have to be infected with poisonous partisanship. Within the party, you can talk about housing rules without breathing the word "Trump."  

San Francisco bans affordable housing

"San Francisco bans affordable housing," is the spot-on conclusion of a lovely post by Vadim Graboys (link to twitter). 

The post is titled "54% of San Francisco homes are in buildings that would be illegal to build today" with an interactive graph of those homes. 

Or, put another way, "To comply with today's [zoning] laws, 130,748 homes would have to be destroyed, evicting around 310,000 people."

The latter statistic is fun, but actually severely understates the damage of San Francisco's (and Palo Alto's!) zoning laws. The only reason current homes are illegal is that they were built under slightly less restrictive zoning laws. So that measures how much zoning laws have gotten stricter over time. It does not measure the much larger number of homes and apartments that were never built.

Sanity in CA housing?

As reported by the Sacramento Bee, its city council voted unanimously to allow four-plexes across the city overturning one-house-per lot zoning. 

It's couched somewhat in the language of diversity, 

City officials said the proposal would help the city alleviate its housing crisis, as well as achieve equity goals, by making neighborhoods with high-performing schools, pristine parks and other amenities accessible for families who cannot afford the rising price tags to buy homes there.

“Everybody should have the opportunity to not only play in Land Park but to live in Land Park,” Mayor Darrell Steinberg said. “That’s the Sacramento that we all uphold, that we love, that we value, and you better believe this drive for inclusion and equity is the driving force of our city and it is going to continue well beyond my tenure here.”

But I applaud that. Yes, the effect of highly restrictive zoning is exactly to drive "diverse" people away. Let's not be hypocrites. 

And ok, we're not waking up in property-rights nirvana either

“We’re going to insist on design quality and scale,” [Mayor] Steinberg said

 in response to comments.  And 

buildings would still have their current height restrictions. There would also be historical protections, limits on how much of a lot size a house could take up and on the amount of square footage.

Ok, baby steps.

Neighborhood association leaders in Land Park and Elmhurs... suggested the city only allow multi-unit houses in certain areas of the city, along commercial corridors and near transit stations.

“No one will have the ability to live in lower-density neighborhoods,” said Maggie Coulter, president of the Elmhurst Neighborhood Association. “The city needs to preserve existing neighborhoods in order to promote home ownership opportunities for everybody.”

Kudos to Sacramento city council for seeing through this complete incoherence, and the obvious flaws of segregating housing to undesirable parts of the city.

The lack of a whisper about "affordable housing" mandates is also refreshing. Maybe sanity can erupt in a one-party state, when discussions are not tinged with partisan derangement syndromes?

Techsodus/Techsit politics.

The tech industry is fed up and leaving San Francisco in particular, the valley and California in general. Covid, like a war, speeds things up. If you're a young economist you could do worse than study this latest chapter in the (likely) decline of great cities (SF, NY, LA? Chicago?) and the movement of people and industries to friendlier, safer, and more welcoming climates. If you're a young political economist, whether they bring with them the politics that destroyed the places they left behind -- slash and burn progressivism -- will be equally interesting to watch. 

I ran across a great essay on this saga by Mike Solana. 

The latest fashion is to claim it's immoral for tech founders and companies to leave, after they have "extracted" so much wealth here. Mike skewers this new fashion, pointing out that tech companies and their founders created wealth here.  Microcode is not mined like gold. 

I take extreme issue with the notion that industry leaders have taken something from the “community,” ...This is precisely the opposite of reality. ... They are the network. Technology workers do not “extract” value from the region, they are what makes the region valuable.

...the Bay Area’s nativist, anti-immigration political climate has certainly not created the tech community, which is populated largely by immigrants, be they from out of the state or out of the country 

But he really digs in on the culture and politics that is going to send this golden goose packing to Austin: 

 the technology industry has brought tremendous tax revenue to the Bay Area. The budget of San Francisco literally doubled this decade, from around six billion to over twelve billion dollars. With our government’s incredible, historic abundance of wealth, the Board of Supervisors has presided over: a dramatic increase in homelessness, drug abuse, crime — now including home invasion — and a crippling cost of living that can be directly ascribed to the local landed gentry’s obsession with blocking new construction. ...

"Landed gentry." That's really good.  

Politically allocated (aka "affordable") housing

I've long been curious about politically allocated housing. (It's called "affordable," and "below market rate," but why should we let the left make up all the buzzwords?) A free market economist smells a rat of inefficient subsidies, and huge inequality-increasing implicit tax rates.

If it's "below market rate" then ipso facto more people want it than can have it, so it has to be allocated by standing in line, lotteries, and/or extensive qualifications. That means it's going to go to people who have been around a long time, not to newcomers who want to get jobs. Once you get an "affordable" unit, I would figure, getting a better job or a raise is going to cost you rent, or getting kicked out of your apartment. Moving across town to get a better job is out of the question -- there is a long line for those apartments. The "affordable" deals all seem to be worked out on a case by case basis, making it very hard for an economist (or voter) to figure out what's going on.

But that's all suspicion. I have been looking for a comprehensive study of these programs, but haven't found one. (Hint: doing such a study looks like a great idea for our free market think tanks!)

Enter a great anecdote: "How Do You Measure The "Success" Of Affordable Housing?" by  Francis Menton, the "Manhattan Contrarian"

Here in Manhattan, it is an article of unshakable religious faith that conjuring “affordable housing” into existence, through some magic recipe of taxpayer subsidies and coercion, is a fundamental responsibility of government.  

In the Bay Area too.

I called government-coerced “affordable housing” the “most expensive possible way to help the smallest number of people.”  

A good theme, but he too misses the possibility that it may be the most expensive possible way to hurt  a larger  number of people, by tying them to a specific income level and apartment.

Menton scathingly reviews a West View News article, "to guarantee the future you have to buy it," which is actually true taken completely out of context. (Buying an apartment is a great hedge against rent increases,.) He covers the story of the Penn South Houses,

This complex of 2,820 units is located between 8th and 9th Avenues, from 23rd to 29th Streets.  At its closest point, it is just two blocks, 0.1 mile, from Penn Station, the busiest train station in the country.

I need to go by on a tourist visit to boondoggles someday.

This complex is what we here in New York call a “limited equity co-op.”  Back in the 60s when it was built, the sponsor (a labor union) sold the apartments for deeply subsidized prices of about $7500 - $15,000 per unit, depending on the size of the unit.  The deal was that when you sold, you had to sell back to the co-op for the exact amount you had bought for — no profiting by selling on the free market.  The project also got a deeply-subsidized mortgage (financed by a tax-exempt bond sale by the State), and a total property tax exemption for 40 years....

Today, a benchmark price for a good-size two-bedroom apartment in this neighborhood would be about $2 million.  According to the WestView News piece, a recent price for a two-bedroom apartment at this complex was about $150,000, subject to the same deal that when you leave you must sell it back for exactly what you paid.  To get one of these apartments, you must go through a waiting list of about 20 - 30 years. 

20-30 years. Well, so much for the young family who wants to move to NY to get a better job.

Menton adds up the subsidies:

But let’s take a more critical view of what the cost of this Penn South thing really is:
The property tax exemption for this complex is worth at least $10,000 per year per apartment, and up to $20,000 per year for larger apartments.  This annual non-cash handout goes entirely to people who by definition are not poor. [Menton added up the costs to live there. You have to be decidedly "middle class"]

Other people who must pay the additional $10,000 or $20,000 tax per year for comparable apartment also must earn cash income to pay that, and then pay tax on the cash income before they pay the property tax.  That’s another subsidy of about $4000 - $8000 per year per apartment. 

People who sell apartments in the private market must pay capital gains tax on the sale at a rate of about 20% federal and 11% New York State and City.  Whatever you might think of the altruism of these people in agreeing to resell without personal profit, they also avoid paying these taxes, that are used to provide government services. 

The article linked above reporting on the federally guaranteed mortgage loan estimates the savings to the complex at $3 million per year.  That’s another $1000 per year per apartment handout that others don’t get. 

Add it all up, and a fair estimate of the cost to taxpayers of this project is around $20,000 per household per year.  And what exactly is the superior moral claim to the annual $20K of these people over, say, you?  If every “middle-income” household (of which there are around 100 million) in the country is entitled to the $20K, we would be talking about an annual $2 trillion +/-.  

This is really good -- not all subsidies are on budget!

Menton gets a very important inefficiency. By subsidizing long-time residents to stay put, we subsidize a very inefficient match of apartment to location.

And even that $20,000 per year per household is on the assumption that in an unsubsidized world this site would remain with the same buildings and the same number of apartments.  If instead the complex was auctioned to the highest bidder and then put to it’s highest and best use — which probably would be some mix of office buildings, hotels, and high-end condos — the resulting property taxes alone would probably come to at least $50,000 per Penn South apartment, and maybe up to $100,000. 

Coase rolls over in his grave at many of these deals. How many of these residents would move out in a minute in return for $100,000 per year?

And finally, did I mention that this project is in close walking distance to Penn Station, the busiest train station in the country?  The government spends additional billions to run hundreds of trains a day in and out of there, only to find a high percentage of the nearby blocks occupied by buildings that almost no one traveling into the City is going to.  So those people need to get off and take the subway, when there could be hotels and office buildings right nearby.  Subsidized housing is about the worst possible land use in the immediate proximity of a major transit hub.

The Elephant's family

David Brooks essay in the Atlantic "The nuclear family was a mistake" has a lot of interesting ideas. We used to (1800s) largely live with extended family. In the mid 20th century we moved to mom, dad and kids, the nuclear family that David thinks is a mistake. Now we increasingly live the widely parodied Life of Julia (Taranto scathing review at WSJ, guide to parodies at Atlantic), individuals whose main relationship in life is to the federal government.

One aspect, tangential to the main theme, struck me. In all our economic discussions about inequality, when we stop shouting at each other, we come down to a commonsense middle ground: There are lots of obstacles in the way of economic, personal, and social advancement for Americans who start on the lower end of the economic ladder. Free marketers tend to point to government obstacles -- horrible schools in the thrall of teacher unions, land use policies that make it impossible to live near better jobs, social programs whose disincentives to work or move to work make that an impossible choice, and so on. Government-run-things advocates ask for more programs, a 58th job training program, UBI, government jobs, government provided housing, more money to the teachers unions, government-run pre-k and day care, gushers of money, and so on. Still, we get to a comfortable point that we agree on a problem, and we're talking about various ways to fix it.

Into this comfortable discussion, Brooks' essay points to the elephant in the middle of the room.  People on the lower economic end in this country start their lives in chaotic families.

In 1970, the family structures of the rich and poor did not differ that greatly. Now there is a chasm between them. As of 2005, 85 percent of children born to upper-middle-class families were living with both biological parents when the mom was 40. Among working-class families, only 30 percent were. According to a 2012 report from the National Center for Health Statistics, college-educated women ages 22 to 44 have a 78 percent chance of having their first marriage last at least 20 years. Women in the same age range with a high-school degree or less have only about a 40 percent chance. Among Americans ages 18 to 55, only 26 percent of the poor and 39 percent of the working class are currently married.

 In 1960, roughly 5 percent of children were born to unmarried women. Now about 40 percent are. The Pew Research Center reported that 11 percent of children lived apart from their father in 1960. In 2010, 27 percent did. Now, if you are born into poverty and raised by your married parents, you have an 80 percent chance of climbing out of it. If you are born into poverty and raised by an unmarried mother, you have a 50 percent chance of remaining stuck.

Nothing, nothing, in our pleasant dirigiste anti-inequality debate adds up to these kinds of numbers. A year of government run pre-K while not even talking about these facts is like handing out bandaids to cancer patients.

Supply and demand in local economics

Act 1: If housing is too expensive, allow the supply curve to operate.

In a surprising bit of excellent economics,  Conor Dougherty  writes "Build Build Build Build..."in Sunday's New York Times.

The story starts with the usual way of doing business (meaning, not doing business) in California:

A developer had proposed putting 315 apartments on a choice parcel along Deer Hill Road — close to a Bay Area Rapid Transit station, and smack in the view of a bunch of high-dollar properties. ... Zoning rules allowed it, but neighbors seemed to feel that if their opposition was vehement enough, it could keep the Terraces unbuilt....

Mr. Falk could see where this was going. There would be years of hearings and design reviews and historical assessments and environmental reports. Voters would protest, the council would deny the project, the developer would sue. ...

Spoiler: Where did this all end up?

Today, after eight years of struggle, his career with the city is over, the Deer Hill Road site is still just a mass of dirt and shrubs, and Mr. Falk has become an outspoken proponent of taking local control away from cities like the one he used to lead.

Mr. Dougherty comes to a most un-Times like view of the problem.

America has a housing crisis. ...One need only look out an airplane window to see that this has nothing to do with a lack of space. It’s the concentration of opportunity and the rising cost of being near it.... There is, simply put, a dire shortage of housing in places where people and companies want to live — and reactionary local politics that fight every effort to add more homes.

Nearly all of the biggest challenges in America are, at some level, a housing problem. Rising home costs are a major driver of segregation, inequality, and racial and generational wealth gaps. You can’t talk about education or the shrinking middle class without talking about how much it costs to live near good schools and high-paying jobs. Transportation accounts for about a third of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions, so there’s no serious plan for climate change that doesn’t begin with a conversation about how to alter the urban landscape so that people can live closer to work.

Housing hope

There is a tendency in grumpy land to view the world as heading in the wrong direction. But a believer in our system must be optimistic that it is eventually capable of reform, that we will do the right thing in the end if only after we try everything else, as the saying goes.

This thought comes to mind in reading the Horrible Housing blunder in the Economist. The Economist calls housing "The west's biggest policy mistake." And, the ray of hope, even the progressive left in California is beginning to wake up and think about somewhat sensible reform.

 ...just as pernicious is the creeping dysfunction that housing has created over decades: vibrant cities without space to grow; ageing homeowners sitting in half-empty homes who are keen to protect their view; and a generation of young people who cannot easily afford to rent or buy and think capitalism has let them down. ... much of the blame lies with warped housing policies that date back to the second world war and which are intertwined with an infatuation with home ownership. They have caused one of the rich world’s most serious and longest-running economic failures. A fresh architecture is urgently needed.

At the root of that failure is a lack of building, especially near the thriving cities in which jobs are plentiful. From Sydney to Sydenham, fiddly regulations protect an elite of existing homeowners and prevent developers from building the skyscrapers and flats that the modern economy demands. The resulting high rents and house prices make it hard for workers to move to where the most productive jobs are, and have slowed growth. Overall housing costs in America absorb 11% of gdp, up from 8% in the 1970s. If just three big cities—New York, San Francisco and San Jose—relaxed planning rules, America’s gdp could be 4% higher. That is an enormous prize.

To put that into perspective, the worst-case scenarios from climate change, now called the "climate crisis" are 10% of GDP in the year 2100. 4% is a lot!

The economist places much blame on subsidies for (highly leveraged) homeownership, and points out the lack of evidence that it has the civic and political benefits alleged. It does not go on, that highly leveraged homeownership is likely a part of reduced dynamism. People do not get up and move from bad areas, because they own an underwater house there. Renting is a fine contract for mobile people, who change jobs more than in the 1950s, and an economy with shifting opportunities. Landlords also have incentives to keep up property, and often do a better job than indebted homeowners who can send the keys to the bank.

s it possible to escape the home-ownership fetish? Few governments today can ignore the anger over housing shortages and intergenerational unfairness. Some have responded with bad ideas like rent controls or even more mortgage subsidies. Yet there has been some progress. America has capped its tax break for mortgage-interest payments. Britain has banned murky upfront fees from rental contracts and curbed risky mortgage lending. A fledgling yimby—“yes in my backyard”—movement has sprung up in many successful cities to promote construction. 

Yes, even in San Francisco. Of course we are also the land of rent control, subsidized housing, impossible zoning and permitting. But there are cracks in the wall. That the Economist, generally center-left consensus, has caught on is good news.

The rent is too damn high

NPR covered the Democratic candidates' plans to address housing issues:

[Julian] Castro would provide housing vouchers to all families who need help. Right now, only 1 in 4 families eligible for housing assistance gets it. He would also increase government spending on new affordable housing by tens of billions of dollars a year and provide a refundable tax credit to the millions of low- and moderate-income renters who have to spend more than 30% of their incomes on housing.

I'm actually surprised it's as much as a fourth. Most government programs outside medicare and social security attract tiny fractions of the eligible people. Watch out budget if people catch on.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren calls for a $500 billion federal investment over the next 10 years in new affordable housing....  

[New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker] would also provide a renters' tax credit, legal assistance for tenants facing eviction and protect against housing discrimination... 

Sen. Kamala Harris has also introduced a plan for a renters' tax credit of up to $6,000 for families making $100,000 or less. 

New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has signed on to both the Harris and Warren plans, which have been introduced as legislation.

In sum, they're piling on to pay your rent or mortgage.

The economic foolishness of all this is painful. Housing is not a single good. It's location, location, location, and also size and condition. This isn't about homelessness. Everyone lives somewhere, so the point is to subsidize larger, better, or more conveniently placed housing. Or, to free up money for people to spend on other things.

Economics is about incentives. If the government pays for all your rent past 30% of your income, that's a big incentive to rent a huge apartment and not to earn any extra income. =

"Affordable housing," doesn't mean affordable housing, in the same way affordable hamburgers mean affordable hamburgers. It's a catchword for "below-market rate" housing, usually mandated by zoning boards, but now I guess to be paid for by the government. But when you give away something for, by definition, less than the market rate, that means people line up for it. Like scarce rent-controlled apartments, is one more impediment to people moving for better opportunities.  

Econ 101: What happens if you subsidize demand, but do not unleash supply?

Prices go up. Period. It ends up entirely in the pockets of current property owners. There is a good case this happened already. To earn a gazillion dollars in tech, you need to move to the Bay Area. There are only so many houses, so the great gains in productivity end up in the pockets of existing landowners.

Aha, you will answer, but they have a fix for that: rent control, now sweeping the nation. We know where that leads.

They also answer, as above, the Federal government will start building houses and apartments.

I guess millenials are too young, and nobody reads any history any more, but, we and especially Europe have tried this one over and over, to catastrophic failure. Go visit the sites of housing projects, now thankfully torn down, in Chicago. They look like Chernobyl. Go visit the cruddy outskirts of European cities, with government built cement apartment blocks. This is our vision for the "middle class?"

In sum, the candidates promise to repeat for housing the immense success of subsidies and supply management and provision that the the government has just accomplished for health care, insurance, and education.

It's usually a good idea to figure out what's broken before we start fixing things. That idea never seems to occur to anyone in politics when talking about economic policies. Where is the market failure in home and apartment building? Why is the private sector not building more housing? The answer is pretty obvious -- zoning, building codes, insane permitting processes and so forth.

So, the government restricts supply, and prices go up. Then it subsidizes demand, and prices go up some more. Then it puts in price controls. So the plan seems to be to bring the government's huge success with health care and health insurance to the housing market.

One tiny ray of light: 

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker would provide financial incentives to encourage local governments to get rid of zoning laws that limit the construction of affordable housing. 

Zoning laws largely keep poor people away from rich people and enforce a lot of racial segregation.
But again, "affordable housing" means "housing allocated by politics," and "housing you'd better not leave once you get it, and better not earn too much either." I wish the article just said "limit the construction of housing, which makes it unaffordable!"

The usual coexistence of subsidy and restriction plays out almost comically in the "gentrification" issue, politicians wanting to be all things to all people:

"It is not acceptable that, in communities throughout the country, wealthy developers are gentrifying neighborhoods and forcing working families out of the homes and apartments where they have lived their entire lives," [said] Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders,..

Warren would also give grants to first-time homebuyers who live in areas where black families were once excluded from getting home loans. "Everybody who lives or lived in a formerly red-lined district can get some housing assistance now to be able to buy a home," Warren told attendees at the She the People Presidential Forum in Houston this spring.

Technically, "Everybody" includes white millennials. I wonder how she will stop that.

Calfornia's SB50 proposal to force  local zoning to allow development near transit had a similar feature. Yes, we allow development everywhere -- except in poorer neighborhoods most in need of development, which are protected from the evils of new Starbucks and Whole Foods popping up.

***

These are tough times to be an economist. As a matter of technocratic policy, this is not hard stuff. Physicists don't have to write blog posts because the candidates want to enshrine the phlogistic theory of heat. Doctors don't have to rail about HHS policy on four humor management. Somehow we are left railing against fallacies understood since the 1700s.

It is, of course, no better on the right. The benefits of free trade and migration have also been known since the 1700s. It is just, sadly, that there is no debate on the right at the moment.

This is a real weakness of the American  political equilibrium, that in a reelection year all the new ideas and analysis come out of the party in opposition. It would be a great time for the Republican Party to try to come to terms with what Trumpism means, how it relates to traditional conservatism, and to hash out ideas like this. Alas, that will not happen.

One is tempted to dismiss all this as rhetoric that will settle down in the general election. But I don't think one should take too much comfort. Trump ended up doing a lot of exactly what he said he would do. Politicians often do.

On this, I found fascinating a tidbit from Dan Henninger in WSJ, covering a poll of Democrats conducted by Fox News.

Fox asked these Democratic voters whether they wanted “steady, reliable leadership” or a “bold, new agenda.” Steady and reliable crushed bold and new by 72% to 25%. 

Anyone consuming the media every day the past year would have concluded that the Democratic left’s “bold, new agenda” had taken over the Democratic Party lock, stock and barrel. Most of their presidential candidates obviously thought so. 

How else to explain why Sens. Warren, Harris and Cory Booker instantly saluted Bernie Sanders’s socialized medicine or, even more incredibly, the antic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s multitrillion-dollar Green New Deal? Recall how Nancy Pelosi, whose 70-something sense of political smell is still more acute than her juniors’, called it “the green dream, or whatever.” 

In fact, when Fox asked these Democrats what they most wanted from their candidate, 74% chose “unite Americans” against just 23% who want to “fight against extreme right-wing beliefs.” Looks like there’s a silent majority inside the Democratic Party, unmoved by the propaganda of social media. 

These are the parts of the Fox poll, surfacing a nostalgia for steadiness and unity, that should upset the Trump campaign, not Mr. Biden’s 10-point lead 16 months before the election. 

Mr. Henninger did not add that Mr. Biden is the one who should be listening hardest. He is currently drifting fast to the left.  The poll tells us that this time, my friends, the answer is not blowin' in the wind. I hope more people listen.

Refreshing YIMBY at NYT

Farhad Manjoo writes an excellent YIMBY (yes in my back yard) essay in the New York Times, remarkably placing the blame squarely where it belongs -- progressive politics.

Across my home state [California], traffic and transportation is a developing-world nightmare. Child care and education seem impossible for all but the wealthiest. The problems of affordable housing and homelessness have surpassed all superlatives — what was a crisis is now an emergency that feels like a dystopian showcase of American inequality. 

Just look at San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi’s city. One of every 11,600 residents is a billionaire, and the annual household income necessary to buy a median-priced home now tops $320,000. Yet the streets there are a plague of garbage and needles and feces, and every morning brings fresh horror stories from a “Black Mirror” hellscape: Homeless veterans are surviving on an economy of trash from billionaires’ mansions. Wealthy homeowners are crowdfunding a legal effort arguing that a proposed homeless shelter is an environmental hazard. A public-school teacher suffering from cancer is forced to pay for her own substitute. 

At every level of government, our representatives, nearly all of them Democrats, prove inadequate and unresponsive to the challenges at hand. Witness last week’s embarrassment, when California lawmakers used a sketchy parliamentary maneuver to knife Senate Bill 50, an ambitious effort to undo restrictive local zoning rules and increase the supply of housing.

He notices the same hypocrisy that struck me walking past the "all are welcome here" signs in Palo Alto:

Then there is the refusal on the part of wealthy progressives to live by the values they profess to support at the national level. Creating dense, economically and socially diverse urban environments ought to be a paramount goal of progressivism... Urban areas are the most environmentally friendly way we know of housing lots of people. We can’t solve the climate crisis without vastly improving public transportation and increasing urban density. ... 

Yet where progressives argue for openness and inclusion as a cudgel against President Trump, they abandon it on Nob Hill and in Beverly Hills. This explains the opposition to SB 50, which aimed to address the housing shortage in a very straightforward way: by building more housing. ... 

Reading opposition to SB 50 and other efforts at increasing density, I’m struck by an unsettling thought: What Republicans want to do with I.C.E. and border walls, wealthy progressive Democrats are doing with zoning and Nimbyism. Preserving “local character,” maintaining “local control,” keeping housing scarce and inaccessible — the goals of both sides are really the same: to keep people out. 

“We’re saying we welcome immigration, we welcome refugees, we welcome outsiders — but you’ve got to have a $2 million entrance fee to live here, otherwise you can use this part of a sidewalk for a tent,” said Brian Hanlon, president of the pro-density group California Yimby. 

It's an obvious point. But it's great to hear this point in the New York Times. An internal reflection on hypocrisy is much more effective than an outside charge.

I don't agree with everything. He starts with a good point,

One continuing tragedy is the decimation of local media and the rise of nationalized politics in its place.

Yes, everyone here in California is so consumed with Trump Apolexy that they don't even notice what the city council is doing. But Manjoo chalks the fundamental problem up to larger representation for rural states in the Senate. Hmm. If the same people who vote for San Francisco zoning have more power to push their agenda on the whole country, I don't see how that makes it better.

Still I see hope. California is a one party state, and the one party is slowly waking up to the fact that it must govern too. Slogans about the great progressive future are fine in opposition, but once you've been in total charge for a while, you do start to own it.  After trying everything else, California is slowly waking up to the fact that we have found the problem and it is us. Subsidies, vouchers, "affordable housing" mandates will never make a dent. Just Let Them Build some housing. It took Nixon to go to China. I was very happy to see the Obama administration recognize the havoc caused by occupational licensing restrictions. The YIMBY self-reflection is not over yet. 

Almost sane housing supply

California, despite being a one-party state, is actively debating SB50 that would over-ride local zoning laws and allow construction of apartment buildings, especially near transit areas.

This is almost a remarkable outbreak of sanity. In a divided government, one can keep touting slogans. But when one party takes over, apparently permanently, they do have to actually govern, and eventually some reality must sink in.

Housing in California is ridiculously expensive. After California tried everything else -- "affordable housing" mandates on developers, subsidies, rent controls, public housing, and so forth -- it is finally facing the fact -- we need to just let people build. Given that California will not allow more land to be devoted to housing -- wisely, in my view -- and given that the first generation housing stock was built cheaply, using a lot of land for little house, the natural place to allow people to build is up: replace small single family houses on large lots with apartments, townhouses, or even single family houses on smaller lots.

The problem here is local zoning laws, building laws and various impeding regulations, which are more or less designed to preserve enormously expensive museums of 1950s suburbia. So SB50 overrides local laws.

The end result, though is saddled by a trip through the progressive sausage factory. I recommend Joe DiStephano's analysis with beautiful maps.

The first stop was rather clever: wrap it in green. "You can build" was never going to fly in California. So the original effort, SB25, restricted the effort to areas near transit. Who can object to allowing apartments near transit, so people can get out of their cars? Moreover, with this twist, SB25 put the kibosh on one standard local trick for restricting construction, requirements for lots of onsite parking.

The transit clause extends to "high quality bus corridors." Now in one sense that's great. Other than nostalgia and cuteness, and outside places like New York City, buses are much better transit options.  But one of the main reasons buses are great is that it is much easier to move a bus line than to move a rail line. You can be on a "high quality bus corridor" tomorrow.

"Jobs rich areas" are now included. Allowing people to live nearer where they work is better than any "transit" idea. That too is a little strange though. If people were allowed to build housing, jobs would locate there quickly. Housing first redevelopment is not too hard an idea.

Alas, the bus and jobs exemption only waive density and parking, and allow cities to keep height limits and other zoning restrictions. Which they will do.  

Then it descends into madness, and an invitation to endless litigation.

"Sensitive communities" are exempt. That means (still quoting Joe), "‘High Segregation & Poverty’ or ‘Low Resource’ in TCAC Opportunity Maps," "Other local areas determined by each regional government through a collaborative process," and "Tenant-Occupied and Rent Controlled parcels."

California will write a law allowing the construction of apartment buildings, and conversion of houses to multifamily units, yet will specifically exempt the areas most obviously in need of redevelopment. Once upon a time governments granted subsidies and tax breaks for redeveloping such places. Minorities and poor people will instead be condemned to live in rotten housing and rotten neighborhoods. Heaven forbid a few apartments get built near transit stops, some yuppies move in, grocery stores and coffee shops grow to serve them, and the rest of the neighborhood. 

Joe's maps tell the story. Where in LA will California allow apartments? Not in the places that need redevelopment! Perhaps if people could build apartments, these might become "jobs rich areas!"   

As its local governments are devoted to maintaining museums of suburbia, the state government is devoted to preserving museums of poverty, racial segregation, and lack of businesses and services. 

(To be fair, the state law only over rides local zoning laws. There is nothing that stops the city of LA from allowing development with or without SB50.)

As a classic example of how we got in to this mess, consider the instant reaction on the Menlo Park nextdoor.com 

Now, if we do a little Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding -- not perfect, but good enough for the Justice Department to sue auto dealers -- we can conclude that the author is white, wealthy, lives in a house worth at least $3 million dollars, and a reliable progressive Democrat, bleeding hearts over climate change and inequality. Yet this post is worthy of the darkest anti-immigrant keep-the-poor-out    climate-denying right-winger. All the people who rehab the $3 million single family houses to $6 million single-family houses in Menlo Park drive in from 50 miles away, as do those who mow the lawns, wait the tables and so on. The young bright kid from Fresno who might get his break working here has little hope of finding a place to live. I guess there is a lot of hypocrisy going around these days, but this is pretty glaring.

Also echoing the local zeitgeist and how-did-we-get-in-to-this-mess thoughts is the ongoing saga of the Flintstone House. NYT here, and a good article at the Guardian If you've ever driven down 280, you've seen this cool house. It was recently sold, and the new owner took up the Flintstones theme:

Before:

After:

More great pictures at SF Curbed. How utterly cool, you undoubtedly think. What did the city do, make it a historic landmark to preserve it? No, the city is suing Ms. Fang, the owner, for landscaping without permits and "community input."

From the Guardian

... the tastemakers of Hillsborough have not extended their favor to the experimental stylings of William Nicholson, the architect...It was in response to the Nicholson’s construction of the Flintstone house in 1976 that the town first established its Architecture and Design Review Board (ADRB), ... established “so there would never be another home like that built in Hillsborough”.

...Mrs Fang claims that she attempted to work with town of Hillsborough to obtain the proper permits for her landscaping work, ..she says she feels like the town is playing with her like a cat with a mouse – “play, play, play, bite, until I die” – and claims she has interacted with the town 44 times while attempting to comply. At one point, the town lawyer pressured her to paint all the mushrooms a single color, she says. “Every time I complied with their request, they moved the goalpost,” she says.

"Design review," which produces Disneyland replicas of craftsman houses and bland identical French farmhouses, allows its executors to stymie permits with endless arbitrary whimsical requests for esthetic changes.

Bottom line, any residual meaning of "private property" is vanishing in California.

(I received a few comments from fellow libertarians last time I wrote about these issues. Shouldn't communities have the right to pass whatever restrictions they want? If they want to preserve a $5 million per house replica of 1950s suburbia, and wall out the unwashed masses, hypocrisy aside, why should the state stop them? I counter, this is not libertarianism, the defense of private rights, this is untrammeled majoritarianism, by which your neighbors via the city strip you of your right to sell your house to the highest bidder, do what you want with it, and strip the ambitious kid from Fresno who wants to move here of his right to be supplied by a competitive marketplace. It's also a monstrous inefficiency. A neighbor who is hurt by $500 from his dislike of looking at your property can destroy millions of value to you. Anyway, it's a longer discussion which I acknowledge here without getting in to it. )

Rent Control Poem

"kevinsch" posts an remarkable essay on rent control on a  Seattle city council blog (HT Marginal Revolution).

I’m not an economist, not a landlord, nor a renter. But since we’re having this debate, I went to the UW Library and pulled the literature on rent control so I could understand the issues, the studies, and what the experts conclude.  Here’s what I found. 

1. Within the community of economists there is broad consensus that rent control is a bad idea. The consensus is on par with the scientific community on climate change, and the medical community on the safety of vaccinations. 

Given the widespread move to introduce rent controls on the left coast, savor that.

2. There are two documented benefits of rent control: it decreases economic displacement for people living in rent-controlled housing, and it can reduce the volatility of rental pricing in cities where there is sufficient stock of rental housing. 

3.  There is a very long list of documented harms that rent control causes. It provides a strong disincentive to build more rental housing. It drives landlords to reduce spending on maintaining their units until the quality of the housing has drawn down to the point where it matches the allowed rent. And thus by reducing property values, it reduces property tax revenues. It reduces mobility for renters, causing them to stay in their rent-controlled housing rather than move when a better job or the needs of their family require it. It misallocates the total housing stock by encouraging people to stay in housing that doesn’t match their needs.  It encourages rental property owners to convert apartments to condominiums, thereby reducing the rental housing stock. It inevitably leads to a “cluster” of regulations piled on top to try to legislate away all of rent control’s problems. And it doesn’t help the people with the greatest need, but rather the people most capable of gaming the system. 

It's remarkable that someone who is not an economist could so quickly find all these subtle effects. Yes, most people quickly get that landlords will not keep up apartments, and builders won't build them. But most people don't quickly get the disincentives for renters not to "move when a better job or the needs of their housing require it." Or that it leads not to nirvana for the low income renter, but helps "the people most capable of gaming the system." I would only add that it really hurts the young ambitious person of limited means who wants to move to town to get that upward-mobility job.

4.  In many cities with rent control, tenants see annual rent increases at the maximum amount allowed, because landlords understand that if they skip a year they will never catch up. 

5.  Rent control’s harms can be mitigated in part through an aggressive public/social housing program that creates a large quantity of units using public funds. However, in those places it’s unclear that rent control itself is adding much value beyond the significant value that the public housing program alone delivers. 

OK, Kevinsch is not an economist so I'll let this pass. The history of aggressive public/social housing programs in US cities are an absolute disaster.

More deeply, he missed the underlying cause of the problem -- building, zoning, and land-use restrictions. Supply meets demand. If builders were allowed to build cheap apartments for modest renters, they would do so. If builders were allowed to build expensive apartments for high-income renters, who then would move out of buildings suitable for low rent apartments, they would do so.

6.  As this paper says, rent control “confers its benefits early, and extracts its costs late.” That’s one of the reasons it’s such an attractive policy idea. 

Well, it confers benefits to renters early. The loss of property value to landlords is instant, but apparently nobody cares about them. The "one time" capital tax is always tempting.

7.  As this article puts so well, among rent control advocates there are no rent control failures; there are only bad implementations. 

Ditto, say, Socialism and Venezuela.

8. And finally, as this research paper suggests, economists have been thorough at convincing themselves that rent control is a bad idea, and inept at convincing anyone else.

This is a gem. And so true. Like, say, tariffs. I wish I knew just how to fix that despite the immense effort and millions of dollars going in to better dissemination of economic ideas.

The essay goes on, and it's worth reading the whole thing. 

There is a lesson here. Why do our governments, and especially local governments, so often wander into terrible economic policies? The "education" theory says they just don't know basic economics, and don't have any competent policy advice. If they and their staff could just be "educated" things would get better. (And if we could break through all the competing parties who also want to "educate" politicians.) The "interest" theory, more typical among public choice economists, views political outcomes as the result of power, not ideas. Rent control wins when incumbent renters who want to stay put win the political battle over landlords, mobile renters, and potential newcomers, and invoke whatever ideas butter the toast of their cause.

That the city council of Seattle has available such amazingly good policy advice speaks to the latter, sad to say for those of us in the "education" business.

The third view is that ideas still matter at the larger level.  A bad idea like rent control requires the asset of the general voter. Yes, incumbent renters who know how to work the system may win the political battle over landlords, property owners, people who want to move to the city and rent, and mobile renters or those not good at working the system, who will lose.  But the larger mass of homeowners, condo owners, and non-controlled renters must go along. They don't have a personal interest, other than a general desire to feel good by helping those who face higher rents, so they don't have much reason to study the issue. If the general electorate understood how bad rent control is for their city, and most of the people they want to help, perhaps economic policy would be better. There is hope for ideas. 

Links: trade, housing, taxes

Three interesting links caught my attention today:

1) Prefab housing in Berkeley and Alex Tabarrok Commentary on Marginal Revolution.

Imagine a four-story apartment building going up in four days, and from steel. It happened in Berkeley, a city known for its glacial progress in building housing. 

Four days? Well, not really

The modules were stacked on a conventional foundation. Electricity, plumbing, the roof, landscaping and other infrastructure were added.

That didn't take 4 days. And

The project, initially approved by the city in 2010 as a hotel, then re-approved in 2015 as studio apartments, 

So, really, 10+ years! (In my personal one data point, getting permits can take as long as building.)

Housing should be manufactured. As Tabarrok points out, it is one place where productivity has not improved much. I gather Ikea is now moving in to manufacture housing (I lost the link). Economies of scale should make a big difference. Once Ikea does to housing what they did to the Poang chair, steadily refining it, they can bringing the price down a lot.

But, manufactured houses have to obey local building codes too, and planning review and design review, and inspections, and all the other little local obstacles. Getting a uniform code will be a big fight, but strikes me as necessary to reap those economies of scale.

The prefab houses are made in China, using steel. A bunch of obvious meditations follow.

As I understand it, we now have import taxes (tariffs) on raw steel from China, but not taxes on products made out of steel. Why does the Trump administration so obviously provide an incentive for manufacturing to move to China? I've read a lot of stories about keg manufacturers, steel locker manufacturers, and so on going out of business over this difference. Is there some part of trade law that I don't know about that forces this outcome, and forbids them to also tax steel content of imports?

It nicely illustrates the point, that if you don't let people come to the US, the capital can go there. Even homebuilding.

2) Greg Mankiw makes an excellent point about marginal tax rates.

Phil Gramm and Robert B. Eklund wrote a great WSJ oped pointing out that inequality in the US really is not as large as it seems, because most measures left out government transfers, even cash transfers. (They cite the CATO study by John F. Early.) Once you add transfers back in again, the US has a much flatter income distribution. We have a more progressive tax system than Europe, with no VAT and lower payroll tax rates, and we do a lot of income transfers.

Greg points out a clever implication of this fact. From the pre- and post-tax and transfer income distribution, we can measure the average marginal tax rate, including the loss of benefits due to program phase out with income:

The bottom quintile earned 2.2% of all earned income in 2013, but after adjusting for taxes and transfer payments, its share of spendable income rose to 12.9%... The second quintile’s share more than doubled, rising from 7% of earned income to 13.9% of spendable income. For the third quintile, middle-income Americans, the increase was much smaller, from 12.6% to 15.4%.

Thus

.. the effective marginal tax rate when a person moves from the bottom to the middle quintile is 1 - (15.4-12.9)/(12.6-2.2), or 76 percent.

76 percent! The average person in the lowest quintile of the income distribution who earns an extra dollar, gets to keep only 24 cents. Can you spot the disincentive to work, or get an education?

Greg says something about heterogeneity that I did not understand, but it strikes me that heterogeneity makes matters worse. Hetereogeneity means people are different. Some people are at a cliff: make one more dollar, lose medicaid or another service. Some people are not.

But if 76 percent on average means half the people face a 100% marginal tax rate and half face a 50% marginal tax rate, I think this means the overall disincentive effects are worse than if everyone faces 75% tax rate. In that circumstance half the people will not work at all. Sometimes in economics heterogeneity makes things worse, sometimes better. I think this is a case of worse, but I would be curious to know if there is a standard answer.

While we're on income transfers and disincentives, back to Berkeley

In lieu of providing affordable units on site, Kennedy will pay a fee to the city of Berkeley’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, as required under the city’s affordable housing laws. The amount is around $500,000, he said. 

Someone needs to write an expose of "affordable housing" programs. Who gets them and how? And once in, disincentives to earn more money, or take a better job in another city must be immense.  It's also another hidden cross-subsidy driving up prices.

3) Back to trade, Tim Taylor the conversable economist has an excellent post on the Jones act. The Jones act is the law that requires all shipping between US ports to be on US made ships staffed by US merchant marines. (Tim builds on another Cato report by Colin Grabow, Inu Manak, and Daniel Ikenson.)

If you want evidence on whether protection makes an industry thrive, this is it

If susttained protection from foreign competition was a useful path to the highest levels of efficiency and cost-effectiveness, then US ship-building and shipping should be elite industries. But in fact, US ship-building and shipping--safely protected from competition-- have fallen far behind foreign competition, with negative costs and consequences that echo through the rest of the US economy--and probably diminish US national security, too. 

...After nearly a century of protection from foreign competition, costs of ship-building in the US are far above the international competition. 

"American-built coastal and feeder ships cost between $190 and $250 million, whereas the cost to build a similar vessel in a foreign shipyard is about $30 million. 

High shipping costs induce substitution

This shift away from water-based transportation to overland road and rail has a variety of costs, like greater congestion and wear-and-tear on the roads. It also has environmental costs like higher carbon emissions: 

Unsurprisingly, the high cost of shipping by water means that in the US, freight is instead shipped overland. Consider, for example, all the trucks and trains that run up and down the east coast or the west coast.  

A long time ago when I was a CEA junior staffer, I got to see a bright idea die. The idea: Let's allow the US to export oil from Alaska to Japan. (There was an oil export ban, part of the legacy of 1970s energy policies.) Then use the money to buy oil from Saudi Arabia to send to the east coast. It's the same thing as sending Alaskan oil to the east coast but much cheaper.  Everyone said great idea until the congressional liason said those ships from Alaska to the east coast are Jones act ships, and here is their list of threats if you do it. End of idea.

I hear even from formerly sensible correspondents now mad for tariffs that we need steel tariffs for national security, so we can fight WWII again, I guess. Well, the Jones act is a nice test case since much of its rationale is to keep a merchant marine going to staff all those liberty ships. Tim (and, really, Colin, Inu and Daniel) demolishes even the national security argument.

if that [national defense] is the goal, the Jones Act is sorely failing to accomplish it. Instead, the Navy can't afford the extra ships it wants, the number of available US civilian ships and the knowledgeable workers to run them is shrinking, and military operations have had to find ways to make use of foreign ships. Some anecdotes drive home the point: 

"When U.S. forces were deployed to Saudi Arabia during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, a much larger share of their equipment and supplies was carried by foreign-flagged vessels (26.6 percent) than U.S.-flagged commercial vessels (12.7 percent). Only one U.S.-flagged ship was Jones Act compliant. In fact, the shipping situation was so desperate that on two occasions the United States requested transport ships from the Soviet Union and was rejected both times. ... At the time, Vice Admiral Paul Butcher, who was then deputy commander of the U.S. Transportation Command, remarked that without the availability of foreign-flag sealift, `It would have taken us three more months to complete the sealift ourselves.' ... 

As with steel, if the goal is national defense, let the defense department ask for appropriations to staff a mothball merchant marine, don't force a hidden cross subsidy into the price of everything else.

Who will pay unfunded state pensions?

Homeowners. So says a nice WSJ op-ed by Rob Arnott and Lisa Meulbroek, and a proposal by Chicago Fed Economists Thomas Haasl, Rick Matton, and Thomas Walstrum.

The latter was a modest proposal, in the Jonathan Swift tradition. Despite Crain's Chicago Business instantly labeling it "foolish," "inhumane," and "the dumbest solution yet, the first article points out its inevitability. If indeed courts will insist that benefits may not be cut, then state governments must raise taxes, and this is the only one that can do the trick.

States can try to raise income taxes. And people will move. States can try to raise business taxes. And  businesses will move. What can states tax that can't move? Only real estate. If the state drastically raises the property tax, there is no choice but to pay it. You can sell, but the new buyer will be willing to pay much less. Pay the tax slowly over time, or lose the value of the property right away in a lower price.  Either way, the owner of the property on the day the tax is announced bears the burden of paying off the pensions.

There is a an economic principle here, the "capital levy." A government in trouble has an incentive to grab existing capital, once, and promise never to do it again. The promise is important, because if people know that a capital levy is coming they won't invest (build houses). If the government can pull it off, it is a tax that does not distort decisions going forward. Of course, getting people to believe the promise and invest again after the capital levy is... well, let's say a tricky business. Governments that do it once have a tendency to do it again.

In sum, a property tax is essentially the same thing as the government grabbing half the houses and selling them off to make pension obligations. And unless a miracle happens, it is the only way out.

Update: We're there already, say Orphe Divounguy, Bryce Hill, and Joe Tabor at Illinois Policy. The bulk of recent increases in property taxes have gone to pay for pensions, not more teachers, police, etc.

Update 2: I should clarify, that I found this an interesting piece of economics more than anything else. I do not think this is the right solution, nor is it the only one. Most other countries around the world, having made unsustainable pension promises, find some way around them and reduce pensions. It happens. Some sort of federal bailout is not unthinkable either. Moreover, the suddenly announced surprise once and for all property tax increase is unlikely, see update 1. So the states are likely to reap many disincentive effects of expected increases in property and other taxes.

Finally, most importantly property tax payers vote! They are unlikely to sit still for such a mass expropriation of their wealth.

YIMBY papers

Two new papers on housing restrictions are noteworthy, Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation by Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti, and  The Economic Implications of Housing Supply by Ed Glaeser and Joe Gyourko.

Readers of this blog will not be surprised at the idea that zoning and other restrictions drive up the cost of housing, and that this has many bad consequences on economic growth and inequality. The papers are especially noteworthy for much deeper implications.

Hsieh and Moretti:

...high productivity cities like New York and the San Francisco Bay Area have adopted stringent re- strictions to new housing supply, effectively limiting the number of workers who have access to such high productivity. Using a spatial equilibrium model and data from 220 metropolitan areas we find that these constraints lowered aggregate US growth by more than 50% from 1964 to 2009.

1) The costs of regulation. The biggest problem in economics right now (yes, I mean that) is, How do we measure the growth consequences of regulation? Looking at the Western world's sclerotically slow growth rate, and listening to many anecdotes, it seems at least plausible that productive innovation is being strangled by byzantine bureacracy, captured by rent-seeking and anti-competitive forces. (Your other choices are, we just ran out of ideas, or some sort of endless "lack of demand.")

But how do we move past anecdote? How to we come up with "regulation is costing the economy x percentage points of growth?" Our statistical measurement system, GDP, unemployment, inflation, and so on, was beautifully designed in the 1940s to measure very Keynesian demand concepts. It isn't designed to answer the question of our time, how much growth is regulation costing us? We are flying in the dark. And Europe, perpetually in an Augustinian moment -- Lord,  grant me structural reform, just not yet--is also.

Well, Hsieh and Moretti are doing it, and by doing so showing one path to answering the larger question.

Half of all US growth for a half century is an astounding amount. 1964: $3,734 trillion;   2009: $14,419 Trillion. Growth = 3.05% per year. At 6.1% per year, $3734 x (1.061)^(2009-1964)=$53.6 trillion dollars!

OK, maybe that's too huge. Well, read the paper and see how they came up with the number. If you don't like their assumptions make different ones. More important than this number is how they are coming up with answers to this, the most important question of economics.

2) Models and micro vs. macro

So how do they make the calculation? Roughly, they measure productivity in cities. They assume that people get higher wages in San Francisco because there are some very high productivity activities that have to be done here. They assume that business could expand and form here, and workers could move here and join in those high productivity activities, both earning higher wages and making more and better stuff for the rest of us. But those workers can't move, and businesses can't expand and form, because housing supply is restricted.

You can see grounds for objection.

How to raise house prices and inequality

From Chris Kirkham in today's Wall Street Journal, department of you can't make this stuff up:

Nearly two-thirds of Los Angeles voters last week approved a citywide affordable-housing requirement.... 

The rule requires that up to 25% of units in rental properties and up to 40% in for-sale projects meet affordability guidelines. Alternatively, developers can pay a fee to the city.
New York City and Seattle passed similar requirements earlier this year. 

The Los Angeles initiative goes a step further, however. It also sets wage standards for the projects. 

Developers must pay construction wages on par with those required for public-works projects, hire 30% of the workforce from within city limits, set aside 10% of jobs for certain disadvantaged workers living within 5 miles of the project and ensure 60% of workers have experience on par with graduates of a union apprenticeship program. 

The mandates could double the hourly wage for some construction trades compared with state median wages. The pay for a carpenter, for example, could rise to $55.77 an hour from $26.16, according to an economic analysis sponsored by opponents of the initiative.

I wonder what that will do to the cost of housing? Notice also that by restricting who can do construction jobs and forcing up wages, there will be lots of new unemployment among lower-skilled or new entrants to construction, often a first step up the ladder for less educated people.

... some developers will be less affected by the change. Those who build primarily affordable housing, using government subsidies, already must pay higher wages. Developers of large high-rise projects, meantime, often use union work crews.

The measure was backed in part by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, a union group,

A union group delighted to eliminate low-wage competition. Let them eat tacos?

“There’s a huge shortage of housing in L.A., and a huge shortage of low-income housing,” he [Shawn Evenhaim, chief executive of Los Angeles developer California Home Builders] said. “They took that problem and made it worse.”

Left out of the article, and a big question I have if anyone knows the answer: who gets "affordable" or "below market rate" housing. Rather obviously more people want subsidized housing than can get it. So who wins the lottery?

"Affordable" housing is parceled out by income limits. So what happens if you get a better job? Are you kicked out of your house? That sounds like a great recipe for perpetuating income inequality. What happens if you get a job offer somewhere far away? Can you trade one "affordable" house for another? I bet not. One more nail in the coffin of advancement.

More deeply, if these things work the way I suspect, there is a long waiting list and a lottery. Once in, you're in so long as you don't get more income. Thus, they entrench and benefit people who have been in one place a long time. And the people really hurt by "affordable" housing -- which restricts supply and raises costs of all other housing -- are newcomers, especially low-income newcomers who would like to come for better jobs. And new businesses who would like to hire ambitious low-income newcomers and give them better incomes.

So the effects are not just to raise house prices -- they are to increase inequality, reduce opportunity, especially for low skill and low income people, and reduce the economic vitality of the region.

EconTalk

I did an EconTalk Podcast with Russ Roberts. The general subject is economic growth, the reasons it seems to be slipping away from us and policies (or non-policies) that might help.

As in other recent projects (growth essay, testimony) I'm trying to synthesize, and also to find policies and ways to talk about them that avoid the stale left-right debate, where people just shout base-pleasing spin ever louder. "You're a tax and spend socialist" "You just want tax cuts for your rich buddies" is getting about as far as "You always leave your socks on the floor" "Well, you spend the whole day on the phone to your mother."

We did this as an interview before a live audience, at a Chicago Booth alumni event held at Hoover, so it's a bit lighter than the usual EconTalk. This kind of thought helps the synthesis process a lot for me.  Russ' pointed questions make me think, as did the audience in follow up Q&A (not recorded). Plus, it was fun.

I always leave any interview full of regrets about things I could have said better or differently. The top of the regret pile here was leaving a short joke in response to Russ' question about what the government should spend more on. Russ was kindly teeing up the section of the growth essay "there is good spending" and perhaps "spend more to spend less" ideas in several other recent writings. It would have been a good idea to go there and spend a lot more time on the question.

Furman on zoning

On this day (Clinton vs. Trump debate) of likely partisan political bloviation, I am delighted to highlight a very nice editorial by Jason Furman, President Obama's CEA chair, on the effects of housing restrictions. A longer speech here. The editorial is in the San Francisco Chronicle, ground zero for housing restriction induced astronomical prices. Furman:

 When certain government policies — like minimum lot sizes, off-street parking requirements, height limits, prohibitions on multifamily housing, or unnecessarily lengthy permitting processes — restrict the supply of housing, fewer units are available and the price rises. On the other hand, more efficient policies can promote availability and affordability of housing, regional economic development, transportation options and socioeconomic diversity...

...barriers to housing development can allow a small number of individuals to enjoy the benefits of living in a community while excluding many others, limiting diversity and economic mobility. 

This upward pressure on house prices may also undermine the market forces that typically determine patterns of housing construction, leading to mismatches between household needs and available housing. 

What's even more praiseworthy is what Furman does not say: "Affordable" housing constructed by taxpayers, or by forcing developers to provide it; rent controls; housing subsidies; bans on the construction of market-rate housing (yes, SF does that); bans on new businesses (yes, Palo Alto does that), and the rest of the standard bay-area responses to our housing problems.  The first few may allow a few lucky low-income people to stay where they are, as long as they remain low-income, but does not allow new people to come chase opportunities. Subsidies that raise demand without raising supply just raise prices more. As in child care or medicine.