Housing is a Sin
Time to expand our definitions
[First in a series]
Taxes are just special forms of laws to make people do something they do not want to do. Regulation is the same thing. Simple reality: If you want less of something, tax or regulate it; if you want more of something, reward or subsidize it. Taxes go to subsidize things that get politicians re-elected. Nothing more. Deal with it.
A good quote from it
“Every state as well as Washington, D.C., taxes cigarettes and gasoline, while thirty-three states as well as Washington, D.C., tax the sale of distilled spirits. The latter total does not include the seventeen states that have direct or indirect control over intrastate liquor distribution, an authority constitutionally granted to the states following prohibition. Of these seventeen states, ten impose minimum prices, effectively dictating all liquor prices. In seven states, the state government enjoys a monopoly on the sale of liquor, owning 100 percent of the market share. All distilled spirit retail profits in Alabama, Idaho, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Virginia go to the state. Most states adopted taxes of the “sin” nature prior to World War II, amid strong public support to dissuade drinking, smoking, speeding, and gambling. Taxes serve as a stream of state revenue collection but are often used as an incentive tool to alter behavior. In this case, the taxes target activities that the public deems undesirable. We Americans, it would seem, don’t seem to like drunk people smoking while we shoot each other. After the temperance movement at last faded with the repeal of federally constitutional prohibition in 1933, tax rates on alcohol remained a major prerogative of state governments. These governments developed an addiction to the very taxes they adopted to deter addiction.”
“It’s NOT about sin, STUPID!!”
The reason cigarettes and booze are dependable revenue sources is that they are built on a habit-forming physiological dependency. Lacking a steady fix of nicotine or alcohol produces such powerful forces in the human mind and body that people do not care what they pay for it. They must have it. Politicians recognize this human frailty and exploit it. Another human weakness is the strong desire to live indoors with running water and electricity. The Theory of Politics is to find an opiate that will extract money from people and spread that opiate as broadly as possible.
Housing as a drug
We have a housing problem. Sort of. A fairly small, but inconveniently noticeable, number of people do not have housing. Many people do not have cars, either. Or designer clothes. Somehow, that is OK. But housing represents the sort of visible “crisis” ripe for political exploitation. Of course, for politicians, the answer to any problem caused by government is more government. Zoning laws, other NIMBY land use restrictions, rent control, punitive property taxes, insurance regulation, all militate against housing supply and raise its price. Take them all away and you would have plenty of affordable housing. Government “solutions” always make matters worse.
Housing, like health care, is just a form of money. The government cures nothing. They also build nothing (or, when they do, it is a disaster). The only reason government has anything to give away is because it first takes it from someone else. You can bet any government “solution” to someone else’s crisis of any form is to take something away from YOU. Physical housing is hard to “redistribute” because it is “lumpy” and fixed in location. But that won’t stop government from showing up at your doorstep with a homeless person as your new roommate. (Caution: link is disturbing.) It is a sin that you have worked hard enough to have an extra bedroom. You are expected to either give up that extra bedroom or its equivalent value in the form of taxes for having committed the sin of success.
In the future, everyone will be homeless. Milton Friedman said:
“If the government were put in charge of the Sahara Desert, within 5 years we would have a shortage of sand.”
You heard it here first.