The Rent Is Too Damn High!!!

[keegs]

Saturday Night Live - Weekend Update - Jimmy McMillan - Video - NBC.com

 

[Leonidas]

YouTube - The Rent is Too Damn UP - A Remix

 

[dex]

I'm sure 'Rent Control' is on the agenda.

Rent Control - Litigation to Protect Property Rights of Landlords
It’s been described by one Swedish economist that next to carpet bombing, rent control is the most effective way yet devised by mankind to destroy cities. In fact there is a book on rent control put out by the Fraser Institute of Canada, that has at the back, photographs of identified scenes of both World War II bombing destruction and rent control destruction. You are challenged to tell which is which, because the answers follow only later. That is the physical effect of rent control.

 

[Leonidas]

I've been reading Thomas Sowell's Economic Facts and Fallacies (Amazon.com: Economic Facts and Fallacies (9780465003495): Thomas Sowell: Books: Reviews, Prices & more) and housing is the first topics he takes a club to. His targeted fallacies include rent control, urban redevelopment, city planning and "smart growth" policies.

The assumption that third-party observers can make better decisions than the people directly involved has produced many urban fallacies and many economic and social disasters.

 

[Brat]

I saw part of the forum with that candidate, he is quite a character.

Rent control, wage controls, rationing for some goods were put in place during WWII. Once the war was over wage control was lifted (labor force returned), goods were plentiful so rationing was eliminated. It took housing a couple years to ramp up but by then rent controlled apartments were a bargain and it wasn't politically feasible to remove rent control.