Economics links

[erudito]

Advice from a successful writer (Joe Scalzi) about being a financially successful writer. More.

In Africa particularly, no amount of foreign aid failure is too much failure.

About the latest book in the successful genre of pop economics. Looking at J K Galbraith’s Affluent Society 60 years on.

The UK hopes to raise money in the Middle East

Comments

[iamcaleb]

I'd like to comment on three things -- tax havens, brain drain and Gailbraith -- by reference to where I currently live, Taiwan

[taavi]

Whatever the failures of the public housing supply, they were and are better than the privately owned slums of the 19th century they were created to replace. Any move to abolish public housing has got to justify why we shouldn't expect the same kind of market failure that prevailed then to prevail now.

We're richer

[erudito]

we shouldn't expect the same kind of market failure that prevailed then to prevail now
Because we (including New Zealand) are a lot richer than C19th UK, which had slums for much the same reasons that developing world cities have slums nowadays. Lots of urbanisation and lots of poverty.

The only reason there isn't housing at the normal long range average entry price of two-and-a-half to three times median household income is because the NZ government regulates land use in a way that ensures it is not so.

There is a great deal of experience with public housing: with the Singapore exception I noted, the experience has been overwhelmingly an unhappy one.

The main reason Singapore is different is that, because it is part of the social control strategy, the government plays close and continuing attention.

[tcpip]

I fail to see why poorly built and designed public housing should condemn all public housing.

Surely even your ideological commitment to private everything can see the advantages of economies of scale, and the productivity gains of having a secure home. Public housing is much better than not having a home at all.

Lots of experience

[erudito]

why poorly built and designed public housing ...
Because the international experience is that poor design, construction and maintenance is the norm for public housing. It is not something that accidentally happens.

There are other problems -- corruption, poor responsiveness to changed circumstances, locking people in place, socially atomising effects ... But systematic failures of design, construction, maintenance and administration will do.

As for "not having a home", the only reason there isn't housing at the normal long range average entry price of two-and-a-half to three times median household income is because the NZ government regulates land use in a way that ensures it is not so. After all, do you think there is a remotely sensible reason why New Zealand has had the highest rate of housing price inflation in the developed world since 2001?

Re: Lots of experience

[tcpip]

Because the international experience is that poor design, construction and maintenance is the norm for public housing.

That's simply not true. The overwhelming majority of public housing has been an improvement on prior constructions. Shall I scan some photos of the slums in Carlton for you before the estates went up?

As for the land restriction issue you know the answer as well as I do. However to concentrate on government restrictions on land use whilst ignoring the effects of landlord speculation displays an ideologically distorted approach to facts.

Re: Lots of experience

[erudito]

"Landlord speculation" is just a nasty phrase for profit-seeking. It is a consequence of the government restrictions, it is not an original cause. I am sure Germany has landlords who want to make a profit as much as anyone else's, but because German land use regulations are different, average house prices have actually fallen in real terms since Unification. The vast disparity in house price rises between jurisdictions is in no part a consequence how profit-seeking their landlords are.

Designs can improve. But they are much more likely to improve, and improve faster, in private construction. And, as the quite recent examples I linked to above show, the poor incentives of public housing continue to operate no matter how much improved design is out there.

Apart from all the other problems, having the regulator also being a producer is a fundamental conflict of interest. One which government officials are not magically immune from.