In Praise of Loaded Questions
"Should we blame the immigrant or the housing policy?"
Here’s my recent interview with the charismatic Dozie Anyaegbunam on a great loaded question.
To be maximally anti-Straussian: Blame the housing policy, not the immigrant!
You can read the show notes on his Substack.
P.S. If I spoke the words “The Gains Are Enormous For Everyone,” that’s definitely overstated…
1) Immigrants vote for the left, the the left is generally against building more housing.
It is completely fair to blame immigrants for whatever the left does because of how they vote. And if you polled immigrants on individual policy issues they would also be left wing on nearly all economic questions.
2) There seems to be some upper limit on how much housing can be built in an area. Especially if it's in-fill (as opposed to virgin land, which is a lot of building in the Sunbelt), I could list off several other variables to throw in the regression.
The bottom line is we probably need to accept certain outcomes without certain limits as the viable policy space.
For instance, taxes as a % of GDP is incredibly stable over time regardless of tax laws. It's probably just a law of social science. Hence, anyone who says they can make that number move up or down too far from the long run average I'm skeptical.
Same with housing starts.
Given this, I think it unlikely that housing can keep up with immigration past a certain rate. I submit....literally every single OECD countries experience as evidence.