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Let's Talk About "Affordability"
Our Democratic friends are pushing the idea of “affordability,” meaning, of course, that they intend to increase government programs and subsidies for voters likely to vote Democrat. Like real-estate down-payment assistance and child-care benefits.
Of course, the DSA crazies want to go much further. They want social housing for all, rent control, Medicare for all, free college, and so on.
Sam Raus wants Republicans to counter this with market-friendly reforms. But how do you fix healthcare when lots of people are getting subsidized healthcare already? How to you fix high home prices without hitting the various subsidies that got housing prices sky high already? I get that energy is pretty simple: “drill baby drill.”
I’m coming to the notion, after most of my adult life as a Hayek/Mises libertarian, that nobody understands the economy. Politicians don’t. Nor do activists. And forget professors and researchers and statisticians. Not even iconic figures like Mises and Hayek.
Take AI. I think it is fairly obvious that AI will turn the economy upside down, with a lot of people presently in the catbird seat losing their status, just like the buggy-whip makers in days of yore. But how will it change the economy? Everyone has their ideas, but nobody knows. And especially, nobody knows who is really going to get hammered by this. Lawyers? Teachers? Bureaucrats? Programmers? Hollywood? We literally have no idea.
But one thing we do know. When government meddles with the economy and spends money and creates subsidies and free stuff there are always unanticipated consequences.
My favorite example is homes and real-estate. Back before the Great Depression you had to put 50% down to get a home mortgage. There were no 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. The interest rate got repriced every ten years. Guess what: that kept real-estate prices down, because no subsidies. Do you see the point? Subsidies lower prices in the short term but often increase them in the long term.
What would be the long term effect of: e.g., universal free child care? Really, we have no idea, but my nickel says that all kinds of things would happen that nobody thought of.
We know that universal free government education for children has created a monstrous money-sucking Education Industrial Complex that underperforms and costs a fortune, and is almost impossible to reform because of teachers unions, activist groups, and parents that just don’t want things to change. But how to change things for the better? Very hard because of all the people benefiting from the Education Industrial Complex and saying you can take my pension out of my cold dead hands.
How do we make the United States “affordable?” Nobody knows. But one thing we do know: government programs make life unaffordable.
Politicians don’t know how to make life “affordable.”
Activists don’t know how to make life “affordable.”
Bureaucrats and administrators don’t know how to make life “affordable.”
Tippy-top investors like Warren Buffett don’t know how to make life “affordable.”
Economic professors don’t know how to make life “affordable.”
And nobody knows how to get there from here, from the mega-state spending 40% GDP down to about 14% GDP like Singapore.
But one thing we do know. Nobody presently touting “affordability” has a clue how to really make life in these United States affordable.
| Thu, 16 Jul 2026 23:03:39 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
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A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Every human alive has a religion, that explains for him, and especially her, the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
The first rule of politics is: never tell people the truth.
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: A Detailed Analysis of Thomas Piketty's Capital
