“Affordability” – Bernie puts out the fire!
The Joke Democrats are Playing on the Voters
Democrats running on “affordability” are playing a joke on the voters. I would say playing voters for fools. That might be a bit harsh but it is true if voters fall for it. Democrats talking about affordability is like an arsonist lecturing on fire prevention.
When Trump took office, the country was a mess. Open borders, inflation, DEI, and transgender issues such as “gender-affirming care” (mutilation) were tearing the country apart. The president went after each of these domestic problems aggressively—perhaps too aggressively. But on inflation, he adopted policies guaranteed not to eliminate it, even if prices are rising more slowly than they did under Biden. Isn’t it interesting that “affordability,” the buzzword used to attack Biden, is now the buzzword democrats are using against Trump?
The president’s response is to insist that his policies have made everything better and that any remaining problems are Biden’s fault. It reminds me of the old line: “If everything is so great, then why do I feel so bad?” There are two truths here: the first is that the president has done very little to focus his administration on the issues of affordability. The second is that democrats are completely incapable of fixing affordability. If anything, they will make it worse. What we need are market solutions, because politicians of every stripe will keep getting it wrong—unless their name is Reagan or Thatcher. Still, the idea that many voters will turn against Trump and the republicans over “affordability” is a joke. There are plenty of reasons to vote against Trump, but affordability isn’t one of them.
Let’s look at a few of the issues:
Housing: Democrats will not loosen the zoning and permitting rules that make housing expensive in the first place. They want rent controls which discourage the construction of new apartments and shrinks supply and banning corporations from owning single-family homes which limits the availability of homes to renters. It costs nearly three times as much to build an apartment in California as in Texas and so-called “affordable” housing projects in California and New York cost more than $1 million per unit. Part of the reason is state and local prevailing-wage mandates. Then add all the costs that come with the Green New Deal.
AIER’s Daily Economy asked why rents in Tokyo are only a fraction of those in New York, even though Tokyo has twice as many people. The answer is supply. Over the past 30 years, New York has added about 600,000 net housing units. Tokyo has added 4.85 million. Want to make housing more affordable? Increase the supply! (thedailyeconomy.org). So why hasn’t the president charged his HUD secretary to aggressively attack the housing issue with market-based solutions?
Wages and labor costs: Minimum wages now top $15 an hour in many democrat states, and there are proposals to raise the federal minimum to $25. Increases like these drive small businesses under and raise unemployment among low-wage workers, leaving more of them dependent on welfare. Prices go up, not down. Businesses respond by replacing workers with technology, pushing unemployment and welfare dependency higher still. It’s worth remembering that some early minimum wage laws openly wanted to keep black workers who were willing to work for less from competing with white workers. Today the main effect is to keep younger, less-skilled workers out of the workforce. That is why labor unions always support minimum wages even though their members get paid much more. It limits competition for their jobs. Very few heads of household earn the minimum wage. But imposing mandated minimums simply drive up costs and result in workers being laid off. Just ask the restaurants and hotels in Washington state and California. Here the president could charge his labor secretary with the tasks of eliminating the federal constraints on wage costs on federal projects and any other federal impediment.
Energy: Yes, Trump’s war has driven up gas prices. But so did Biden, when he shut down drilling, ended leases on federal lands, canceled leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and banned new offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic coast. Expect more of the same—and less supply—under the democrats, along with the return of the Green New Deal and all its attendant costs. Want lower energy prices? Increase the supply! Here it seems that the EPA director and the secretary of energy have been proactive in opening up more supply and decreasing the costs associated with the Green New Deal. Build more refineries! Scrap the Jones Act! Remove all restrictions on Canadian oil! Build more pipelines from Canada to the US (remember Keystone?)!
Healthcare. Don’t you think the “Affordable” Care Act has had a wee bit to do with rising health costs? Premiums for employer plans have roughly doubled since 2010, about twice the rate of inflation. Want to bet that whatever comes next won’t be worse? Trump thinks price controls on drugs will help, but fewer life-saving drugs will be developed and less not more will be available. Meanwhile, certificate-of-need laws limit new facilities and keep existing ones from offering new services, scope-of-practice laws restrict what nurse practitioners and other non-physicians can do on their own, and state licensing laws make it hard for doctors to treat patients across state lines. These all limit supply and keep costs high. Trump bungled tried to get rid of Obamacare in his first term and has not touched it in his second. The democrats want Medicare for all and a single payer health system. If you think these are what we need, just go to Britain of Canada and look at all the bad teeth and all the long wait lists for medical procedures that we take for granted. As one Canadian outfitter once told me, “sure we have lousy healthcare, but at least we don’t have to pay for it.” Believe me, Americans would soon find out that British and Canadian healthcare are nonacceptable. However, any solutions would have to go through Trump’s HHS secretary who does not seem interested in addressing affordability issues and any “solution” coming out of HHS would probably make matters even worse.
Electricity: Many people now blame AI for rising electricity costs but costs were rising before the advent of AI. The democratic “solution” is to restrict supply and to make it more costly. Coal and nuclear plants were shuttered and replaced with more expensive solar and wind power. In other words: decrease supply while increasing costs. Some solution. Here again, the EPA director and the secretary of energy should have an explicit agenda to deal with this problem based on market solutions. Suggestion: go nuclear!
Get rid of the bums and replace them with democrats? Do it but one thing is guaranteed: democrats will make matters worse, because they hate market solutions that take control out of the government’s hands. They have no real interest in any “solution” that doesn’t involve more government control. So tell me, how exactly will the democrats make things more affordable? Which of their policies will actually help? Democrats don’t see ousting republicans as a way to address affordability, they see it as a chance to impose their own agenda. Their policies do the opposite of what they promise. Where have we seen this picture before? (Fool me once). With democrat policies in place, things will get a lot worse, and voters will again turn out the bums. Only this time they will be democrats.
Still the real solutions lie in simple economics: prices are determined by supply and demand. To lower prices, either demand has to fall or supply has to increase. Anything else does not work. The real question is whether things will get bad enough that voters demand a return to common sense market solutions instead of the heavy hand of government. Perhaps. But where is the politician who can carry that message and win? I’m not holding my breath.
