On the allocative efficiency front, the Harris campaign has pledged to impose nation-wide rent controls, an idea first floated by President Biden. Under the proposal, “corporate landlords” with 50+ units would have to “either cap rent increases on existing units to no more than 5% or lose valuable federal tax breaks,” referring to depreciation write-offs. This would be a disastrously bad policy for the supply-side of housing, and an example of the sort of destructive economic populism normally ascribed to Trump.
Harris’s terrible housing policy can be discounted insofar as it would require an Act of Congress. That said, the impending expiration of key TJCA provisions creates a real opportunity for a version of this idea to be advanced via tax negotiations. As a senator, Harris introduced the Rent Relief Act in 2018, which would have offered “tax credits to renters who earn below $100,000 and spend more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities.” This tracks with her record as attorney general, where she drafted and helped pass the California Homeowner Bill of Rights while supporting a number of other dubious “affordable housing” initiatives. Her policy instincts are thus consistent with the worst “subsidize demand, restrict supply” form of lawyerly progressivism.
In general I find that a lot of your arguments are extremely one-sided in that they ignore very obvious counterarguments and fail to make the relevant comparisons on the same issue.
For example, on innovation policy, I think it’s fair to praise the Trump administration for Operation Warp Speed, though this was a bipartisan effort that was enacted while Harris was a Senator, so she should also get credit for it. On the other hand, the Trump administration would do a lot of things that would be awful for innovation policy, including restricting immigration, making the US more culturally hostile to highly educated immigrants, increasing costs via 10% across-the-board tariffs, and reducing the fiscal resources available to subsidize innovation.
I think rent control is bad policy, but I think it’s intellectually indefensible to not also note the various housing-restrictive things Trump has championed: e.g. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/agenda47-ending-bidens-war-on-the-suburbs-that-pushes-the-american-dream-further-from-reach and https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-protecting-suburbs-preserving-american-dream-americans/. Vance has also framed this as a demand issue due to illegal immigrants rather than as a supply side issue, which is obvious nonsense and also in deep tension with his pronatalist position. You also fail to consider how a 10% tariff on goods imported into the country would affect construction costs (my guess: not good) or how mass deportation of an enormous proportion of the construction labor force would affect it (my guess: also not good).
I would also note that, for all the flaws of the Biden–Harris administration on housing, more houses are being built during their administration than during Trump’s.
In general I find that a lot of your arguments are extremely one-sided in that they ignore very obvious counterarguments and fail to make the relevant comparisons on the same issue.
For example, on innovation policy, I think it’s fair to praise the Trump administration for Operation Warp Speed, though this was a bipartisan effort that was enacted while Harris was a Senator, so she should also get credit for it. On the other hand, the Trump administration would do a lot of things that would be awful for innovation policy, including restricting immigration, making the US more culturally hostile to highly educated immigrants, increasing costs via 10% across-the-board tariffs, and reducing the fiscal resources available to subsidize innovation.
Strong downvoted on this basis.