2021 Boston Mayoral Race

Your entire post is just stating what you think I believe and I’m the one not discussing in good faith?
Rent control does not increase housing production nor does it lead to increasing quality of housing stock. More demand for housing will increase housing production as we see in Boston. If only new housing construction wasn’t constantly subject to reduced height limits, lower density and so-called community benefits when housing construction itself is the community benefit.

The actual studies on this question in MA, which I happened to link earlier in this thread, disprove your claims here (ending rent control did not increase production and similar studies in other cities found similar).

I have already gone over several times (including before you even made the point):
Not working from whose perspective? Landlords? Because everyone I know with a rent control apartment in NYC or Berlin (Before the unfortunate repeal) loves it and anyone who doesn't have it wishes they did. Even studies that are often claimed to be evidence against rent control, show it is very effective in terms of stabilizing housing for renters (thus helping prevent displacement which is a huge issue in this city right now).

This study and this study on the end of rent control in Massachusetts both found that ending it did not increase construction (as is often claimed by opponents of rent control) but it did reduce the length of time tenants lived in their homes, and increase rent prices.

This study based in NJ found that rent control increased the number of available units.

This study from Colombia Business school found substantial benefits to rent control.

This study from Stanford on the Bay Area found that it effectively limited rent hikes, and did not effect new construction and the only downside was landlords using loopholes to convert to condos.

An argument for rent control in the Urbanist

Effectively the downsides are overblown and can be prevented or at least alleviated by closing loopholes. The upsides are much less acknowledged because it is a policy that benefits the poor at the expense of the rich, and the latter has a lot more money to fund biased studies by ideologically aligned or just straight up bought think tanks. For some serious problems we have in this city such as rapidly raising rent prices and displacement of individuals and communities it can be very effective.
also:
Several studies show the latter not to be the case. The recent boom in both came about 2 decades after rent control ended, and cannot be said to be caused by it. This is atrocious reasoning on your part, especially in response to peer reviewed studies disproving your claim before you even made it.

You have never engaged in good faith based on the evidence you stake your position based on what materially benefits yourself and those in your position and call anyone who isn't rich/a multiple property owner insane for understanding what might benefit them. You have shown no interest in a good faith discussion you can be mad I am not interested in having one with you, I don't care. I provided evidence for my claims. You nor anyone else who seems to ultimately agree with you has done the same. You have given soundbites based on an Econ 101 level understanding of supply and demand. I think that will be pretty obvious to anyone looking on who isn't already a committed devotee of the market god and praying at the shrine of Friedman.
 
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The actual studies on this question in MA, which I happened to link earlier in this thread, disprove your claims here (ending rent control did not increase production and similar studies in other cities found similar).

I have already gone over several times (including before you even made the point):

also:


You have never engaged in good faith based on the evidence you stake your position based on what materially benefits yourself and those in your position and call anyone who isn't rich/a multiple property owner insane for understanding what might benefit them. You have shown no interest in a good faith discussion you cant be mad I am not interested in having one with you.
To be clear, you have no idea of “my position” and I never called anyone anything. I stated my position that rent control is bad for those it seeks to help. Rent control is one factor in suppression of housing construction. Ending it after decades doesn’t change population trends, capital formation or the ability to get development proposals through the thicket of required approvals overnight.
Thanks for the continued personal attacks. I hope you find peace.
 
You think this idea is a disease it clearly is both frightening and heinous to you. I have provided evidence that disproves the claim you keep repeating to act like you care about renters and not your own pocketbook but the reality is transparent. These studies do also include other factors in their analysis if you have a substantive issue with their methodology let's debate that specifically. I don't think you really do have one though nor do I think you have even read them. You seem to be ideologue who will find what you need and ignore what contradicts it while relying on established dogma and institutional inertia to justify it to yourself.
 
Why are your posts all: “You think”?

It’s not frightening to me. I don’t own rental real estate. I think it’s a disease, yes. It reduces amount and quality of housing. Plentiful, low cost housing is better achieved through construction of more housing. This is not solved by one project or in a short time. There is a backlog due to decades of stagnation that must be overcome.

Two examples - 9 unit building too dense: https://www.universalhub.com/2021/board-rejects-nine-unit-residential-building

A recent post about Everett from DShoot88:

^^ A few other notes about how/why Everett is seeing so much new development:
- As of Right Zoning: Everett’s been very proactive about updating its zoning to accommodate new larger scale development ever since Wynn Resorts got the casino license.
- You know how in Boston there are Impact Advisory Groups, the Boston Civic Design Commission, Landmark Commission, Historic Commission, a million neighborhood groups, 13% affordable housing minimums, stringent DBE requirements, and variance requests for all new large-project developments that can draw out the approval process years (and dollars)? Everett doesn’t have these. Sky Everett, for example, had a 2-month approval process.
- A lot of the new development in Everett is in historically commercial and industrial areas. This makes it less disruptive to existing Everett residents, and is good for local businesses.
- Opportunity Zone: much of the new development in Everett is in a designated Opportunity Zone, meaning it’s much more favorable a location for large multi-family development tax-wise than other areas. It’s not an accident—this is all happening as planned.
-Timing: supply constraints in every municipality surrounding Everett the last decade coupled with regionally high housing demand has made Everett’s comparably low property values ripe for developer interest.
 
The rights of property owners vs tenants is defined in the lease. I don’t need to google the laws. I learned them in law school.

Congratulations, we both have the same overpriced, oversaturated degree.

My point (and if you went to law school then you surely already know this) was that the state can and does put limits on what can actually be consented to between landlord and tenant via a lease. So when DonkeyButlers suggests the state put certain legal limits on leases in order to create certain protections for renters, your response of “but the landlord owns the property” isn’t really legally relevant.
 
Congratulations, we both have the same overpriced, oversaturated degree.

My point (and if you went to law school then you surely already know this) was that the state can and does put limits on what can actually be consented to between landlord and tenant via a lease. So when DonkeyButlers suggests the state put certain legal limits on leases in order to create certain protections for renters, your response of “but the landlord owns the property” isn’t really legally relevant.
I was referring to “rights of first purchase” and “conversion”. I am not aware of any law requiring a landlord to offer a property to a tenant over someone else. Secondly my point was that the tenant has a right to occupy for a fixed term of the lease and there is no obligation on the landlord to renew said lease. I am well aware of safety rules etc but once you require a landlord to have a preferred buyer and require renewal clauses indefinitely it borders on a partial taking.
Glad to have another counselor on this board.
 
Thomas Sowell on rent control:

Some quotes from the clip:
-New York and San Francisco have very long and severe rent control laws, and yet when you look at cities with the highest rents in the country they are #1 and #2.

-What happens with rent control, around the world really cause it's been tried so many times, is if the rent control is severe people either reduce the amount of housing they build or they stop building housing altogether.

-Both the landlords and the tenants lose (with rent control). They lose in different ways and to different extents. The tenants lose because they can't find a place to stay. The landlords lose because they don't make the profit they would have made otherwise. The builders lose because there's no demand for apartment buildings if nobody can make a profit on it.

I learned a lot about this stuff by reading this book below, Basic Economics 5th edition, and am now finishing up my 2nd by the same author. Nobody else has ever gotten me to think and question and think and think and think quite like Thomas Sowell. Very engaging and accessible reads too. The guy sure does love his empirical data, digging 6 layers deep, testing, questioning, and logic.


"Those who cry out that the government should 'do something' never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing." His writings on the causes and exacerbations of the Great Depression are absolutely fascinating. Pretty much everything he has to say is absolutely fascinating. Comes out with another book practically every other year. By the way the guy is 91 years old and still chugging along!
 
Do you understand anything about taxing authority in Massachusetts?
There are all kinds of extra taxes and/or fees the Mayor of Boston and the City Council can think up to "SAVE BOSTON FROM THE IMPENDING CLIMATE CATASTROPHE THAT IS HAPPENING IN T-MINUS 12 YEARS."
 
Funny thing is Wu isn’t the one who would need to come up with the dough for 300 more cops in what is already one of the most heavily policed cities in the country.
 
His writings on the causes and exacerbations of the Great Depression are absolutely fascinating.

I must stress: I have never read him.

However, if Sowell claims that, in retrospect, the best approach to the Great Depression would've been a "let the market--and correspondingly, the national culture--heal itself," then he is an even bigger donkey--as in fascist-leaning, Ayn Rand-worshipping, plutocrat-infatuated donkey--than I suspected.

By all non-deranged accounts, the period between FDR's win in November 1932 and his inaguration in March 1933 was the absolute blackest period in our nation's history, as terrible as the years immediately following the American Revolution and the condition of the American South in 1865. With the emergence of "attractive alternative authoritarian models" in Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union [at minimum] by early 1933, there was definitely a legitimate concern that a significant cohort would demand an overthrow of our democratic republic and its replacement with a communist or fascist dictatorship.

Instead, FDR electrified the country--at least, a sizeable portion of it--with a blitzkrieg of relief and reform measures. Did it matter that the whole alphabet soup of new federal relief agencies was in many ways nullified, neutralized, struck-down by the Supreme Court, or otherwise demonstrated ineffective, in terms of generating real economic revival? So what? Again, we were on the brink of a dictatorship, by many accounts.

Point being, to focus solely on whether or not the New Deal achieve tangible economic improvements is to completely miss the fact that it accomplished some measure of national cultural revival and spiritual healing, if you accept the premise that the nation was in a state of collective psychosis in the months between when FDR won the election and his inauguration.
 
I must stress: I have never read him.

Then you probably shouldn't respond, since nothing you said beyond this is relevant.

Here's an excerpt from an article discussing views he frequently espouses in his books.

"Right here and right now there is a widespread belief that the unregulated market is what got us into our present economic predicament, and that the government must "do something" to get the economy moving again. FDR's intervention in the 1930s has often been cited by those who think this way.

What is on that one page in "Out of Work" that could change people's minds? Just a simple table, giving unemployment rates for every month during the entire decade of the 1930s.

Those who think that the stock market crash in October 1929 is what caused the huge unemployment rates of the 1930s will have a hard time reconciling that belief with the data in that table.

Although the big stock market crash occurred in October 1929, unemployment never reached double digits in any of the next 12 months after that crash. Unemployment peaked at 9 percent, two months after the stock market crashed-- and then began drifting generally downward over the next six months, falling to 6.3 percent by June 1930.

This was what happened in the market, before the federal government decided to "do something."

What the government decided to do in June 1930-- against the advice of literally a thousand economists, who took out newspaper ads warning against it-- was impose higher tariffs, in order to save American jobs by reducing imported goods.

This was the first massive federal intervention to rescue the economy, under President Herbert Hoover, who took pride in being the first President of the United States to intervene to try to get the economy out of an economic downturn.

Within six months after this government intervention, unemployment shot up into double digits-- and stayed in double digits in every month throughout the entire remainder of the decade of the 1930s, as the Roosevelt administration expanded federal intervention far beyond what Hoover had started."

From https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/thomas-sowell-the-myth-of-how-the-great-depression-was-resolved

However, if Sowell claims that, in retrospect, the best approach to the Great Depression would've been a "let the market--and correspondingly, the national culture--heal itself," then he is an even bigger donkey--as in fascist-leaning, Ayn Rand-worshipping, plutocrat-infatuated donkey--than I suspected.

Let's see, on one side we have Thomas Sowell who uses logic and empirical data while referring to Point A. On the other side we have DBM who resorts to name calling and, since the user knows nothing about Thomas Sowell's work, doesn't even address the same thing. In fact, it seems like Thomas Sowell's approach might have PREVENTED THE GREAT DEPRESSION FROM EVER HAPPENING based on the country slowly healing from the crash until Hoover intervened, and only then spiraling into, as you say, the blackest period in our nation's history. I feel like I am going to have to side with the "donkey" on this one.

Again, Thomas Sowell has written 30 books, citing thousands of sources for empirical data that he meticulously researched, while you haven't read a single page or listened to a single interview of his yet still have a strong enough opinion about him to resort to name-calling.

“I think we're raising whole generations who regard facts as more or less optional.
We have kids in elementary school who are being urged to take stands on political issues, to write letters to congressmen and presidents about nuclear energy.
They're not a decade old, and they're being thrown these kinds of questions that can absorb the lifetime of a very brilliant and learned man. And they're being taught that it's important to have views, and they're not being taught that it's important to know what you're talking about.
It's important to hear the opposite viewpoint, and more important to learn how to distinguish why viewpoint A and viewpoint B are different, and which one has the most evidence or logic behind it. They disregard that. They hear something, they hear some rhetoric, and they run with it.”
-Thomas Sowell

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Then you probably shouldn't respond, since nothing you said beyond this is relevant.

Here's an excerpt from an article discussing views he frequently espouses in his books.

"Right here and right now there is a widespread belief that the unregulated market is what got us into our present economic predicament, and that the government must "do something" to get the economy moving again. FDR's intervention in the 1930s has often been cited by those who think this way.

What is on that one page in "Out of Work" that could change people's minds? Just a simple table, giving unemployment rates for every month during the entire decade of the 1930s.

Those who think that the stock market crash in October 1929 is what caused the huge unemployment rates of the 1930s will have a hard time reconciling that belief with the data in that table.

Although the big stock market crash occurred in October 1929, unemployment never reached double digits in any of the next 12 months after that crash. Unemployment peaked at 9 percent, two months after the stock market crashed-- and then began drifting generally downward over the next six months, falling to 6.3 percent by June 1930.

This was what happened in the market, before the federal government decided to "do something."

What the government decided to do in June 1930-- against the advice of literally a thousand economists, who took out newspaper ads warning against it-- was impose higher tariffs, in order to save American jobs by reducing imported goods.

This was the first massive federal intervention to rescue the economy, under President Herbert Hoover, who took pride in being the first President of the United States to intervene to try to get the economy out of an economic downturn.

Within six months after this government intervention, unemployment shot up into double digits-- and stayed in double digits in every month throughout the entire remainder of the decade of the 1930s, as the Roosevelt administration expanded federal intervention far beyond what Hoover had started."

From https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/thomas-sowell-the-myth-of-how-the-great-depression-was-resolved



Let's see, on one side we have Thomas Sowell who uses logic and empirical data while referring to Point A. On the other side we have DBM who resorts to name calling and, since the user knows nothing about Thomas Sowell's work, doesn't even address the same thing. In fact, it seems like Thomas Sowell's approach might have PREVENTED THE GREAT DEPRESSION FROM EVER HAPPENING based on the country slowly healing from the crash until Hoover intervened, and only then spiraling into, as you say, the blackest period in our nation's history. I feel like I am going to have to side with the "donkey" on this one.

Again, Thomas Sowell has written 30 books, citing thousands of sources for empirical data that he meticulously researched, while you haven't read a single page or listened to a single interview of his yet still have a strong enough opinion about him to resort to name-calling.

“I think we're raising whole generations who regard facts as more or less optional.
We have kids in elementary school who are being urged to take stands on political issues, to write letters to congressmen and presidents about nuclear energy.
They're not a decade old, and they're being thrown these kinds of questions that can absorb the lifetime of a very brilliant and learned man. And they're being taught that it's important to have views, and they're not being taught that it's important to know what you're talking about.
It's important to hear the opposite viewpoint, and more important to learn how to distinguish why viewpoint A and viewpoint B are different, and which one has the most evidence or logic behind it. They disregard that. They hear something, they hear some rhetoric, and they run with it.”
-Thomas Sowell

Did you even bother to read my post?

--I made no references to the stock market crash of 1929.

--I made no references to any of Hoover's policies/philosophies/interventions, from the crash until his exit from office.

--I only discussed the situation the nation was facing from FDR's election in fall of 1932, through Hoover's lame duck period of 1932-33, and then FDR's deployment of the New Deal policy.

--And, again, if you bothered to read, you would've seen I was most interested in how the New Deal during that critical phase may have helped to prevent the nation from sliding into communist or facist dictatorship, even if it didn't contribute one iota to actual economic relief.

So, I'm certainly curious to hear you engage with what I posted... but otherwise, everything you wrote was a completely irrelevant aside to my critique.

P.S. Appending glossy headshots of Sowell to the end of posts is just bizarre and creepy. What is he, some kind of hero of the Soviet republic that we're supposed to genuflect to? I bow before no graven image or idol, lol.
 
What the government decided to do in June 1930-- against the advice of literally a thousand economists, who took out newspaper ads warning against it-- was impose higher tariffs, in order to save American jobs by reducing imported goods.

This was the first massive federal intervention to rescue the economy, under President Herbert Hoover, who took pride in being the first President of the United States to intervene to try to get the economy out of an economic downturn.

Within six months after this government intervention, unemployment shot up into double digits-- and stayed in double digits in every month throughout the entire remainder of the decade of the 1930s, as the Roosevelt administration expanded federal intervention far beyond what Hoover had started."

Does this author think that the Dust Bowl had nothing to do with the Great Depression?

In any case, the people behind the Green New Deal in 2021 aren’t the same people who want protectionist economic policies.
 
Did you even bother to read my post?

Yes, you made a wildly incorrect assumption about his opinions and then went on a full rant regarding that assumption, name-calling included. What's irrelevant is that nothing you said had anything to do with what I was referring to, yet you used it to personally attack a person who you admittedly knew nothing about.

Everything else I wrote tied back to my original post, not to your incorrect assumption about my post.

Also, I'm quite curious, have you ever read a single page written by Ayn Rand either, or is your opinion of her based entirely on what other people told you it should be?

P.S. Appending glossy headshots of Sowell to the end of posts is just bizarre and creepy. What is he, some kind of hero of the Soviet republic that we're supposed to genuflect to? I bow before no graven image or idol, lol.

He has zero positive things to say about communism, at least in the 800+ pages I have read and 10 or so full interviews I have seen. He does have a lot to say about it in his Basic Economics book though, just, again, the opposite of what you seem to be assuming/insinuating. He was actually a "self avowed Marxist" when he was young, right up until he spent a year working in government. This was well before he began churning out his books so he has no written opinions that I know of which would frame communism in a positive light.

 
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Within six months after this government intervention, unemployment shot up into double digits-- and stayed in double digits in every month throughout the entire remainder of the decade of the 1930s, as the Roosevelt administration expanded federal intervention far beyond what Hoover had started."

So let me get this straight. You are arguing that Hoover caused the great depression, in order to prove that Roosevelt was bad? I think you lost track of your own thesis. That said, I agree with you that Hoover's approach was misguided and harmful. I also agree with @DBM that Roosevelt's approach was important for reasons far beyond economics. He literally saved this country from communism, but is ironically now called a communist by misguided right wing ideologues.
 
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