'Renters Are Struggling': Economists Back Tenant-Led Push for Federal Rent Control

https://lemmy.world/post/2758313

'Renters Are Struggling': Economists Back Tenant-Led Push for Federal Rent Control - Lemmy.world

My understanding is that rent control backfired pretty spectacularly in the long term.

The better plan here would be to stop companies from buying residential properties, to incentivized the conversation of commercial properties into apartments, to penalize banks and individuals who are sitting on unused residential properties.

Oh, and wipe out all student loan debt so that younger generations have a prayer of buying a house someday.

@flossdaily @return2ozma

Who told you rent control backfired? Cause that's a lie. It was just never adopted as widely as it should have been, and rich owners always have the ear of lawmakers ... the same can't be said of poor/working poor people.

The one issue every economist can agree is bad: Rent control

The problem is rent control doesn’t do anything about the reason rents are rising.

The Washington Post

Capitalist/free market* economists.

Rent control works just fine in a more socialist model, especially when the government is a prime builder of housing without seeking profit, as almost every European country was during the 50s-70s. It’s only when government gets out of house building and everything gets privatisated and for-profit that rent control fails.

Don’t know if you’ve noticed this yet, but the United States has a capitalist economy.

Semi. It’s got bits and pieces of all systems, which is a hint that the “-ism” powering any country’s economy doesn’t have as big an impact as it’s leaders.

Unfortunately, capitalism tends to reward corruption, it’s much easier and profitable to be corrupt than to do the right thing™.

Libraries are socialist. Otherwise every person in a fully capitalist system would be expected to buy their personal copy of a book.

What you’re referring to is called a “mixed economy” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy

And you’re right - there are scales with capitalism and socialism weighing against each other in every western economy. Finland, Norway, France are examples where it’s tipped a bit more in favour of the “socialism” side. But the US has plenty of elements of socialism, from housing coops in the Bronx, to utility coops in the midwest (that helped pave the way for the electrification of rural America), to credit unions, to welfare policies, to the Alaska social wealth fund, and I could keep going.

Mixed economy - Wikipedia

Finland and Norway have among the highest percentage of private investment in the world, to the extent that investment is the leading economic driver in Nordic countries.
Libraries are not socialist. Socialism is not, in fact, when the government does things.

Thank you, boring and incorrect pedant.

It truly depends on the definition of socialism. Is it socialist anytime a service is provided by the govt? Or solely when public policy limits the abilities of capital?

You and I disagree, and that’s ok cuz I don’t care.

Yes we disagree on the meaning of a word, which means one of us is correct, and it’s me
Wrong again, as usual. How sad.
The US has lots of socialized losses but privatized profits. To call it a capitalist economy is a gross oversimplification which glosses over the fact that no corporation is actually competing in a free market at this point.