Friday, April 17, 2009

Magic words

From Thomas Sowell, writing at Townhall.com:
... Some of our biggest political fallacies come from accepting words as evidence of realities. "Rent control" laws do not control rent and "gun control" laws do not control guns.

The big cities with the tightest rent control laws in the nation are New York and San Francisco. The nation's highest rents are in New York and the second-highest are in San Francisco.

There is a very straightforward explanation for that. Strong rent control laws can bring residential building to a screeching halt. Once politicians have milked the political advantages of passing rent control laws, they have to avoid a backlash if all building of apartments stops.

That leads to an escape hatch in the rent control law. Luxury apartments with rents above a certain level are exempted. That leads to the shifting of resources away from building affordable housing to building housing that is unaffordable.

It is even more painfully obvious that "gun control" laws do not control guns. The District of Columbia's very strong laws against gun ownership have done nothing to stop the high murder rate in Washington. ...

Article here.

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