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The circular logic of Kamalanomics

9 0
18.09.2024

In last week’s debate, Kamala Harris embraced the leftist policy fallacy that more spending solves everything. Nothing epitomizes this fallacy more than Harris’s subsidized housing solution.

Harris somehow believes that federal subsidies will increase housing, decrease prices and fix the problem the Biden-Harris administration’s inflation has created.

Harris touted her proposal to build 3 million new houses in four years and create a $25,000 housing credit for first-time buyers. Presumably, the new 3 million houses will be subsidized by the federal government (otherwise they would be built anyway), while the new homebuyer credit will do the same on the market’s demand side.

What could possibly go wrong with giving something to everyone except those outside the housing market who will be picking up the tab? Plenty — and it will.

First, Harris will have to get her pie-in-the-sky proposals through Congress. To do that, she will have to pay for them.

The average starter home now costs $240,000. To build 3 million houses would require $720 billion, because no builder is going to undertake such projects without a full cost guarantee from the federal government.

All this also assumes that there would be ample building supplies and construction workers available to build an additional 3 million houses over the next four years, beyond the houses already planned. That’s a big assumption. America’s annual new home construction is 1.4 million,........

© The Hill


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