"[J]ust to be clear, there's nothing wrong with a low cost of living. In particular, there's a good case to be made that zoning policies in many states unnecessarily restrict the supply of housing, and that this is one area where Texas does in fact do something right."
What? WHAT? What alien spaceship stole P-Kroog, and who is this guy?
I think the problem is P-Kroog is actually a first-rate economist, and so sometimes he forgets his self-appointed role as slinger of shinola and actually makes sense briefly.
That article, linked above, does pretty quickly revert to P-Kroogery of the worst sort. But, for just a minute there....
4 comments:
Nice article, thanks for the information.
Yeah, Kroogers. People move to Houston for the combination of cheap housing and sweltering humidity. Those folks probably figure they'll learn a trade once they've settled into their McMansions, right?
Which came first, the right to work or jobs? Point being, it seems like we should compare TX to MI for job creation/destruction policy analysis.
"People move to Houston for the combination of cheap housing and sweltering humidity."
Well said. As a native Houstonian, I have a hard time imagining any American moving there based on the weather--because we all know at the end of the day, everyone wants to live in a place where walking across your front lawn to get the mail anytime from April to September will cause you to break out into a full sweat. How can the rust belt compete with that?
And to then explain the massive population and employment growth on zoning laws alone seems kind of ridiculous. Don't get me wrong. I think Houston has it right when it comes to zoning, but I didn't realize that zoning was so powerful.
For more P-Kroog busting, check out this guy:
http://www.politicalmathblog.com/?p=1590
He also had this:
"Also, Texas was spared the worst of the housing crisis, partly because it turns out to have surprisingly strict regulation of mortgage lending."
Since when do democrats admit that any sort of mortgage elegibility restriction is a possibly a good thing?
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