Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

Re:Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017) by mcguire on Sunday March 31, 2019 @12:25PM (#19536400)

In the United States, anyway, local governments' regulation is largely driven by noisy or wealthy local residents. In most places, regulation is a minor hurdle for a decent real estate investor, all of whom regard single-family and small multi-family dwellings as a slobber-inducing opportunity when demand is high. (The high rents you can get from a quadplex are pretty small compared to the rents from a 10-story apartment building.)

So, the question is really, "if it isn't real-estate developers trying to keep rents high, who has the money and therefore power to convince the government to adopt regulations preventing apartments?"

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Re:Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017) by epistasis on Sunday March 31, 2019 @06:27PM (#19538838)

> In most places, regulation is a minor hurdle for a decent real estate investor, all of whom regard single-family and small multi-family dwellings as a slobber-inducing opportunity when demand is high.

But you're conflating the two types of places: most places aren't "high" demand, and those that do have super inflated costs also have processes by which developers are regularly stopped. California in particular has this problem.

In fact reading your post really made it clear to me the dichotomy between places that welcome new people and have governments that try to serve the people (by letting developers build), and places that try to enrich current residents by blocking out newcomers and thereby forcing demand to be far higher than supply.

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