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“How San Francisco’s rent control and anti-landlord housing laws make housing there less affordable and less available”

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Seattle Sam:

These laws are enacted for the same reason the minimum wage laws are — to provide non-market benefit to those who HAVE a job or apartment at the expense of those who are shut out of a job or an apartment.

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PeakTrader:

Would you pay $1,000 a month for an apartment worth $300 a month, because you can’t find anything else and you’re desperate?

Have you ever heard of the term “slumlord?”

If you can exploit workers or renters, go for it, right?

Why would an employer hire a 20-year old American to generate $5 an hour in profits, when he can hire a 30-year old Mexican to generate $10 an hour in profits?

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And if you raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, consumption may rise, and when consumption rises, more workers will be needed, at $15 an hour, etc.

Maybe, you’d rather have poor Mexicans and Chinese working for $5 an hour in San Francisco, share apartments in the Oakland slums, and take BART or a bus to work and back.

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Supply-demand is a partial equilibrium model, not a general equilibrium model.

There are people paying too much in rent and there are people paid too little in compensation.

http://www.epi.org/publication/ib330-productivity-vs-compensation/

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Morganovich, of course, you see no problem paying $1,000 a month for a dump and see no problem having someone paid $5 an hour for hard work.

And, of course, you see no problem in an economy with a trillion dollars a year in idle resources, including capital, where there’s huge excess reserves, investment in gold and U.S. Treasury bonds, etc., rather than flowing into consumption, to raise output and income.

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I didn’t respond to the article. I responded to Seattle Sam’s simple statement.

Too much regulation can be worse than too little regulation.

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Morganovich, you’re not going to supply any labor at $5 an hour when you know the work is worth $10 an hour. So, you’ll live with your parents, and play video games, go to school, or collect welfare. You may make a good living panhandling.

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Ron, I’m not surprised Morganovich supports your blissfully illogical and ignorant comment.

There are no contradictions in my statements.

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I see it was too much for Ron and Morganovich to figure out the difference between one individual, i.e. Morganovich, and the U.S. labor force in general.

One reason Morganovich is less likely to work for $5 an hour when he knows his work is worth $10 an hour is he can fall back mooching off his parents, while a poor immigrant may need to work to send money to his parents.

However, there are many other reasons, which I could explain, and would also prove Ron and Morganovich are blissfully illogical and ignorant people.

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If there was only the choice of being a slave for food and shelter or starving and freezing, I think, most people would choose to be a slave, just to survive.

We shouldn’t ignore the great improvements in economics in the 20th century and go back to a capital-labor model when labor was an expense and expendable.

The country is much more knowledgeable today than when we had the suboptimal 19th century laissez faire economics of slower per capita real GDP growth and deep boom-bust cycles.

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Ron, I’m sure, normal people understood I used “slave” figuratively, not literally.

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There may be many minimum wage workers who qualify for food stamps.

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http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/06/how-san-franciscos-rent-control-and-anti-lanlord-housing-laws-make-housing-there-less-affordable-and-less-available/#comments

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PeakTrader:

Morganovich says: “…ducking key questions…”

I answered all your minimum wage questions many times before and showed you how they were wrong.

Yet, you, and a few others, keep making the same economically illiterate, illogical, and ignorant statements.

There’s no way I can keep-up correcting your statements, because I don’t have 24 hours a day to spend on this blog.

What I find interesting in your latest comments is you use the orthodox terminology I’ve been using, like “reservation wage,” to fool the most naive people into believing you know what you’re talking about.

Yet, it doesn’t work, because it contradicts mathematical and empirical models, along with the economics literature.

If I see only one wrong statement from you, I can show you (again) why it’s wrong.

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Government or unions shouldn’t appear to take the ethical high ground for workers, because of undesirable effects.

For example, a friend started a firm about 20 years ago and has well over 100 employees now.

He pays the highest possible wages for his workers, who all earn $30,000 to $60,000 a year, and buys equipment to make the work easier for them. He pays himself $150,000 a year. He could pay himself much more, if he wanted to, but limits his pay.

That’s always been his business philosophy, to pay his workers as much as possible and make their jobs easier. Attracting and retaining better workers was likely a major factor why he was able to take market share from his competitors.

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Methinks, it’s a private firm and he plows-back all his profits into the firm.

He could pay himself more than twice as much if he just didn’t give out big Christmas bonuses each year (based on seniority) to his over 100 employees.

However, I’m sure, you understand “Scrooge.”

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Me, it's amazing how many false assumptions you can make in a short paragraph.

You don't even know if his firm is a corporation (C or S), LLC, partnership, or sole proprietorship, and you didn't know it's a private firm, until I told you.

The firm actually exists, and it seems you find it hard to believe some people are ethical in business.

Here's a site where you can learn something about dividends:

http://www.wbsonline.com/resources/dividends/

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http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/06/thursday-afternoon-links-2/#comments

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PeakTrader:

And yet some people ignore the tremendous improvements in economics over the past hundred years.

For example, crackpot libertarians want to get rid of the Fed, although before the Fed, per capita real GDP growth averaged 1.36% a year from 1814-1910, and after the Fed, it averaged 2.13% per year from 1914-2010.

Also, they want to free people from labor standards, e.g. the minimum wage, legalize drugs, adopt an isolationist foreign policy, etc.

It’s no wonder mainstream voters run away from them and to socialists.

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Vangel, the data contradict your assumptions.

For example, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, from 1871-1914, per capita real GDP growth was 1.56% a year. At the height of the Information Revolution, from 1982-07, per capita real GDP growth was 2.22% per year.

Under the Fed, purchasing power increased, because per capita real income growth was stronger.

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Per capita real GDP growth after WWII between 1946-70 averaged 2.09% per year.

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However, from 1946-70, the masses had greater prosperity, because real compensation kept up with productivity.

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The real minimum wage is $3 an hour lower today compared to its peak in 1968, while per capita real income has more than doubled.

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John Dewey, the Fed deserves tremendous credit for creating economic conditions to facilitate faster economic growth.

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http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/06/there-are-no-natural-resources-only-raw-materials-all-resources-are-created-through-human-effort/#comments

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