Posted on 05/13/2008 6:54:40 PM PDT by jazusamo
Let's face it. Supply and demand will never replace "need" and "greed" in political discussions of economic issues.
Talking about the "need" for more affordable housing or more affordable medical care is what will get politicians more votes this election year.
Voters don't want to hear about impersonal things like supply and demand. They want to hear about how their political heroes will stop the villains from "gouging" them or "exploiting" them with high prices.
Moral melodrama is where it's at, politically.
Least of all do voters want to hear about the most fundamental reality of economics-- that what everybody wants has always added up to more than there is.
That is called scarcity-- and if there were no scarcity, there would be no economics. What would be the point, if we could all have everything we want, in whatever amount we want?
There were no economists in the Garden of Eden because everything was available in unlimited abundance.
A politician with good rhetorical skills can create a new Garden of Eden in people's minds, though only in their minds. However, that is sufficient, if that vision or illusion can be kept alive until election day, and its failure to materialize afterwards can be explained away by the obstruction of villains.
One of the many ironies of politics is that those politicians who do the most to reduce supply often express the greatest outrage about high prices.
So long as the voters buy it, the politicians will keep selling it.
Make a list of those politicians who do the most to prevent our drilling for our own oil. Then make a list of those politicians who express the most outrage about the high price of gasoline. Don't be surprised if you see the same names on both lists.
Make a list of those politicians who most loudly lament the lack of "affordable housing." Then make a list of those politicians who have most consistently promoted restrictions on the building of housing, under the banner of "open space" laws, "farmland protection" policies, preventing "urban sprawl," and other politically soothing phrases.
Again, do not be surprised at seeing the same folks on both lists.
Is it really too "complex" to figure out that taking vast amounts of land off the market will make the price of the remaining land far more expensive? Or that houses built on very expensive land will be very expensive housing?
Despite the current decline in housing prices, a recent advertisement in a Palo Alto, California, newspaper listed a vacant lot for sale at $879,000. If you build anything more elaborate than a tent on that property, you are talking about a million-dollar home, be it ever so humble.
Many of the places with very high housing prices have very modest homes on very small amounts of land. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story about a graduate student seeking a place to live, "visiting one exorbitantly priced hovel after another."
It is not at all uncommon for land to cost more than the housing that is built on it, in those places where politicians have made housing unaffordable with land use restrictions under pretty names-- all the while lamenting the lack of affordable housing.
So long as politicians can get some people's votes by publicly feeling their pain when it comes to housing costs, and other people's votes by restricting the building of housing, they can have a winning coalition at election time, which is their bottom line.
Economists may point out that the different members of this coalition have conflicting interests that could be better resolved through competition in the marketplace. But how many economists have ever put together a winning coalition?
So long as voters prefer heroes and villains to supply and demand, this game will continue to be played. It is not because supply and demand is too "complex" to understand, but because it is not emotionally satisfying.
---
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
I fell in love with Thomas Sowell way, way back when I was reading his columns in Forbes Magazine. He was great then and still gets it right on the money.
“One of the many ironies of politics is that those politicians who do the most to reduce supply often express the greatest outrage about high prices. “
Truest statement I have seen in a while. How many libs are running around screaming about high prices, who opposed drilling in the ANWR, building new refineries or reactors, drilling off-shore, or even building wind farms off-shore because it would hurt Ted Kennedy’s view? They are legion.
How come Dr. Sowell isn’t running for President? We need a rational and logical thinker such as him
Exactly! There’s no better example than the energy fiasco right now.
Thomas Sowell - Walter Williams ‘08. Or Walter Williams - Thomas Sowell ‘08, for that matter. Either way would be fine by me. In any case my dream ticket. Blacks to the Future! Quite possibly the two most intelligent Americans alive.
very nice piece.
1/ Gosh golly wow; Tom Sowell is a really cool guy and smart, too! [If I read one more post that says that I’m gonna scream!]
2/ Is there anyone out there that can actually make a comment on the subject matter without drooling? For example:
>> Is it really too “complex” to figure out that taking vast amounts of land off the market will make the price of the remaining land far more expensive? <<
Comment: Florida has made a business of massive land grabs; the latest to fall is an 8-1/2 square mile area west of Miami that’s a boondoggle for strip miners. Both the mega-farmers (selling krappy land at inflated values to the State and Federal Gumm’nt) and the land developers (less supply makes their land worth more) are in hog heaven.
Anybody? Anybody?
Gosh golly wow, haven’t heard about that 8-1/2 square mile boondoggle. Fill us in on how it relates to the current election. :-)
“Anybody sez:
1. Enviro-socialists like Sierra Club, Audubon, ad nauseam are the reason America has no new nuke power plants.
2.France, however gets the vast majority of its electricity from nukes.
3. USA has a huge amount of uranium (the stuff that glows in the dark and makes megawatts in the process).
4. USA also has a dozen working nuclear aircraft carriers while France has only one.
5. Hint: The French nuke carrier doesn’t work quite often.
6. Even the French were smart enough to realize that nuke power plants are good insurance for an emergency.
7. America has a super volcano named Yellowstone Park.
8. Said super volcano erupts about every 600,000 years ago.
9. The last time it erupted the mid west was covered in ash measured in feet of deposited material.
10. After such a disaster, nuke plants will still work, but oil plants will have no supply due to covered roads and rail lines.
Don’t forget the Muslims and their destructive faith/behavior.
Also don’t forget how many nations would like to nuke us into oblivion.
Nukes are good, whether in our arsenal or in our power plants.
SOLUTION: Don’t a Liberal or a RINO.
Enthusiastic comments about Dr. Sowell’s columns indicate the dearth of such concise commentaries on correct and important points.
“Thomas Sowell - Walter Williams ‘08. Or Walter Williams - Thomas Sowell ‘08, for that matter. Either way would be fine by me. In any case my dream ticket. Blacks to the Future! Quite possibly the two most intelligent Americans alive.”
“””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
Well, they are both very intelligent and I will take my hat off to either one but I don’t know if they are the MOST intelligent Americans alive. What impresses me about both of them is their ability to see reality without a lot of preconceived notions. It is almost as though they see through the eyes of children. It has often seemed to me that a high percentage of adults somehow make the simple things very complicated and at the same time oversimplify what really is complicated. Maybe that is what I am doing with this post, I know what I am trying to say but it seems hard to say it.
Make a list of those politicians who most loudly lament the lack of "affordable housing." Then make a list of those politicians who have most consistently promoted restrictions on the building of housing, under the banner of "open space" laws, "farmland protection" policies, preventing "urban sprawl," and other politically soothing phrases.
Again, do not be surprised at seeing the same folks on both lists.
Yes, the same names will appear on both lists. And, the very people who vote these yokels into office will make those lists, see the same names on the list, and say "so what!"
This, of Mr. Sowell's thoughts: So long as voters prefer heroes and villains to supply and demand, this game will continue to be played. It is not because supply and demand is too "complex" to understand, but because it is not emotionally satisfying.
I had originally thought to argue with Mr. Sowell's use of the word "satisfying" and originally inserted "gratifying". But again, he is correct - the word indeed must be "satifying". Why, say I? Because the voters who voted these "same list" yokels into office are seldom if ever gratified after the campaign "promises". All they get is the satisfaction in the fact they voted in their Punch and Judy "politician".
You make a good point, the people who elect the politicians on both lists are only satisfied that (in their own mind) they won but in reality they and all of us lose.
Dr. Sowell deals in reality.
A politician with good rhetorical skills can create a new Garden of Eden in people's minds, though only in their minds. However, that is sufficient, if that vision or illusion can be kept alive until election day, and its failure to materialize afterwards can be explained away by the obstruction of villains.
So long as the voters buy it, the politicians will keep selling it.
Vote McPain????? You don't want the wrong lizard to win!!!!
I’m wondering if as Dr. Sowell talked about land being taken off the market, Dr. Sowell was composing a soliloquy for the Senate Majority Leader, that scumbag Harry Reid.
Reid and his 4 kids (all lawyers/lobbyists) buy and sell land and other largesse from/to Indian tribes out in Nevada with huge amounts of wampum going into the Reid protectorate pocket.
Maybe you should switch to decaf.
“Tom Sowell is a really cool guy and smart”
QBFimi2 is a piece of drek.
Ain't it the truth. BTT.
I didn’t even think about dingy Harry and his land deals till you mentioned it. There’s been threads here in the last couple years on them.
I guess it’s possible but Dr. Sowell is not bashful about naming names if he wants to get his point across. He’s sure been hitting on Obama lately. :-)
From Wiki:
The story contrasts commonplace details of contemporary life with a barbaric ritual known as the "lottery." The setting is a small American town (population of approximately 300 and growing) where the locals display a strange and somber mood, from which unusual things can evidently be observed, like children gathering stones, as they gather on June 27 for their annual lottery. After the husband from each family draws a small piece of paper, one slip with a black spot indicates the Hutchinson family has been chosen. When each member of that family draws again to see which family member "wins," Tessie Hutchinson is the final choice. She is then stoned to death by everyone present, including her own family, as well as both the young men and young girls as a sacrifice to ensure a good harvest, according to the belief of the community. --end snip
Think... Political Correctness lottery gauntlet of our age.
I probably could, but I don't see the point. This guy is just SUCH a genius....
I'd say they easily join Onelifetogive in the top 5...
How come Dr. Sowell isn’t running for President? We need a rational and logical thinker such as him
Are there actually any other "rational thinkers like him?"I have been using this tagline for a while, merely as a way to advocate (alas, how certain it is to be futilely!) for the selection of someone like him for VP. Knowing that Sowell himself is about 77, and considers McCain at 71 to be too old.
Congressman Billybob (actual name, John Armor) recently contended the Asheville, NC Republican primary for nomination to Congress a week ago - and if you checked out his debates on Youtube you would see that you would instantly prefer him to any of the remaining three candidates for nomination as POTUS (in fact, BTW, he did a fundraiser a year ago to get money, I think $1000, to pay the Duke student newspaper to reprint one of Professor Sowell's pieces on the denouement of the Duke Lacrosse "rape" case). In a 3-man race, Armor drew a paltry 10% of the vote.
That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the likelihood of getting a "rational thinker like him" elected President. I had such high hopes, in the late eighties/early nineties, for Jack Kemp. Congressman Kemp redefined conservative political economics by convincing the Republican Party that excessive tax rates were too high a price to pay for fighting inflation, and had been elevated to the level of not merely diminishing but of negative returns. Before Kemp, the Democrats had the Republicans cornered - Democrats would fight for higher spending, getting credit for being Santa Claus, and the Republicans would lose that battle and then "win" the battle to control the deficit by raising tax rates - getting blame for being the Grinch. No wonder Democrats controlled the House continuously for the 40 years from 1955 to 1995!
Kemp was also aggressively non-racist; he would show up at NAACP meetings when no other Republican would do so, and was able to defend his politics in that sort of venue. Alas, Dole nominated him for VP - and he proved to be little more suited to the role of VP candidate than Ross Perot's sidekick, Admiral Stockdale. In the debate, Al Gore found a snarky way of flattering Kemp while smearing the white middle class Republican - and Kemp thanked him for the compliment! Kemp was every inch the Republican political hero, as he had been every inch a star professional quarterback for the Buffalo Bills in the old AFL before the merger with the NFL. Yet signally failing to defend the Republican base from Gore's smear was all it took to make Kemp a has-been on the national political stage. It was that ghastly.
If politics is that treacherous for a rational, competent public speaker like the lawyer John Armor - and even for the intellectual star quarterback and political pro Jack Kemp - what chance is there of ever getting a Thomas Sowell as far as the nomination to national office? Face it, Reagan was one-of-a-kind. And even he wasn't perfect.
And of course Sowell's article itself points out how effective the demagogues are at attacking rationality. This article of mine discusses why journalism plays the role it does in that process.
>>“Tom Sowell is a really cool guy and smart”
>> QBFimi2 is a piece of drek [sic].
I think you may be missing the point here. Dr. Sowell’s usual concise and brilliant columns should stimulate discussion, rather than the plethora of fawning comments I often see. Decades ago, I heard Sowell speak in Denver, and watched him cut the fawners in his audience to the quick (myself included). I would hope that FR remains an intellectual Tom Tiddler’s ground where we all can grow, rather than a me-too “dittoland”.
BTW - From “The Joys of Yiddish” (1968): “Dreck is forceful but vulgar, like its English equivalent ‘crap’”. Neither word was fit for your mother’s ears. If you prefer the Mitteldeutsch or Alte Hochdeutch spelling, it is “drec”. Either way, it may be best confined any to lefty blogs you may frequent.
>>Haven’t heard about that 8-1/2 square mile [Miami] boondoggle. Fill us in on how it relates to the current election.
Well, Dr. Sowell said this: “Is it really too “complex” to figure out that taking vast amounts of land off the market will make the price of the remaining land far more expensive?”
To find the boondoggle, Google up “Grossman Hammock”. The 8-1/2 square miles are just to the east of that. Big Gumm’nt has great contempt for white rednecks. In this case, they also included lotsa Cuban immigrant campesinos who, after being driven from their country farms by Castro, longed from their tiny SW 8th Street Miami apartments for the old days. They found it here, and when my wife and I worked at the Kendall Gliderport (now also land-grabbed by the Feds) just south of Grossman Hammock in the early ‘80s, it was a favorite post-work tour on the way home. The land was condemmed by the Gumm’nt, and after many a lost court battle, the last of the existing houses is slated for destruction as I write this. Just as city folks looked down on the “drunks and rednecks” (many were) who were displaced at 40-Mile Bend (Ochopee, FL, west of Miami), the City Cubans in Miami did the same to these folks. So, the Gumm’nt pigs out and takes more land off the market. Winners: 1/ Present landowners and real estate developers, 2/ Mining companies (the land is platted as being 2’ higher than it really is; they will “restore” the land by charging the Gumm’nt for scraping off that 2’ and then selling it for $35/ton). 3/ The environmental “mitigators”. The homes, palm trees and the native vegetation are all gone, but the evil non-native Australian pines are left standing, awaiting a lucrative removal contract. 4/ The recently-fattened Gumm’nt agencies, who are actively supervising this and nailing up “No Trespassing / Gumm’nt property” signs.
What’s that about a “dangerous servant and fearful master” I’ve heard? To my FR friends: Vote carefully, very carefully.
Fair enough and thanks, your reply shows you’re serious.
Dr. Sowell has quite a following here at FR as he does with many in the country. For people to acknowedge his intellect and writing skills with praise doesn’t deserve the type of post you made, IMO. I do think you were trying to stimulate discussion but believe there are better ways to do it.
Welcome to FR.
That's a ticket I'd not only vote for, but donate money AND volunteer!!!!
>> It is not because supply and demand is too “complex” to understand, but because it is not emotionally satisfying.
What is there to say about those who are emotionally satisfied when forced to adopt a particular behavior?
Excellent.
I am happy that Mr. Sowell is not running for president because he is far too valuable as a social observer and commentator. He could not function in a sea of political schmooze. I would be very happy if our president, who ever that is, would regularly seek and heed Mr. Sowell’s counsel.
EXCELLENT!
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