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'Renters Are Struggling': Economists Back Tenant-Led Push for Federal Rent Control
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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Like... Every economist:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/15/comeback-rent-control-just-time-make-housing-shortages-worse/
Capitalist/free market* economists.
Rent control works just fine in a more socialist model, especially when the government is a prime builder of housing without seeking profit, as almost every European country was during the 50s-70s. It's only when government gets out of house building and everything gets privatisated and for-profit that rent control fails.
Can you name some countries/policies where it's a continuing success?
Depends on your definition of "success." Countries such as Holland, France, Canada, Germany, and China all have caps on the amount by which a landlord can increase rent in any given year, usually by law it's less than 5%, or indexed to inflation (but with 5% as the max). These laws are incredibly popular with renters and have been around for decades.
Berlin implemented a hard rent freeze in 2020 which was extremely popular with renters, but not with landlords, naturally.
However, rent control isn't just a hard price cap like back during the war, there are many nuanced aspects, see here for information: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/23/berlin-rent-cap-defeated-landlords-empty
Don't know if you've noticed this yet, but the United States has a capitalist economy.
And it's failing
The US has lots of socialized losses but privatized profits. To call it a capitalist economy is a gross oversimplification which glosses over the fact that no corporation is actually competing in a free market at this point.
Semi. It's got bits and pieces of all systems, which is a hint that the "-ism" powering any country's economy doesn't have as big an impact as its leaders.
Unfortunately, capitalism tends to reward corruption, it's much easier and profitable to be corrupt than to do the right thing™.
Libraries are socialist. Otherwise every person in a fully capitalist system would be expected to buy their personal copy of a book.
Libraries are not socialist. Socialism is not, in fact, when the government does things.
What you're referring to is called a "mixed economy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy
And you're right - there are scales with capitalism and socialism weighing against each other in basically every economy. Finland, Norway, France are examples where it's tipped a bit more in favour of the "socialism" side. But the US has plenty of elements of socialism, from housing coops in the Bronx, to utility coops in the midwest (that helped pave the way for the electrification of rural America), to credit unions, to welfare policies, to the Alaska social wealth fund, and I could keep going.
The author of that article is Megan McArdle. A quick look at her other articles:
I'm sure she has no right wing economics bias lol
@flossdaily
Putting all your faith in economists whose sole purpose is to back the current capitalist shitshow that rapes the land and kills the poor is a strange take.
But you do you I guess.