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Politics and Economics
Point is, for most Americans, principal residence is the primary sources of wealth. After that: pensions and retirement accounts. But nobody expects younger adults to have much in the way of pensions or retirement accounts. So the question becomes: why are younger adults delaying home ownership? The next two charts tell a big part of that story…
“…it was not until the 1920s, four decades after Thomas Edison’s first power station, that manufacturers embraced [his] killer app for electricity, designing factories to accommodate dynamo-powered assembly lines…. Genuine innovations are inherently difficult to spot in advance. So the game is more about creating the right conditions for companies to press ahead and to seize on breakthroughs when they arrive. Asian-tiger governments are steering their economies with a lighter touch
Economists typically use tax data to determine income distribution in the US, but their results vary widely…Why such a range of estimates? It’s complicated but I’ll try to simplify the issues without misrepresenting them.
Good government seeks to foster conditions conducive to the well-being of its people. This mission is not all that different from that of a parent: provide a secure base while encouraging the child to leave the zone of safety to explore the world. There’s still a secure base to return to in case you lose your way - a solid safety net - but you’re free to wander, experiment, fail, get up again, and pursue happiness on your own terms.
What is a reasonable, humane and safe shelter? At a minimum, a shelter where conditions are conducive to restful sleep: quiet, supervised, with storage space and a place to keep pets. Also, sufficiently clean and uncrowded to protect shelter residents from contagious diseases and criminal victimization. Ideally, all shelters would allow a stay of at least a week.
Permanent housing is the ultimate goal for all the unsheltered homeless. And in some places, it may be possible to quickly provide very cheap housing for all unsheltered homeless in the area. But these are places that don’t have much of an unsheltered homeless population in the first place, because very cheap housing is already available, such as trailer or RV parks in rural areas. Unsheltered homelessness is mostly a problem in coastal cities where it is expensive to build and live. The unsheltered still need a safe place to stay while they wait for permanent housing to open up. Which can take quite a while, because…
Guaranteed shelter would pay for itself because it would greatly reduce the costs associated with unsheltered living, e.g., costs related to medical emergencies, criminal justice involvement, law enforcement, security, clean up, property repair, public health, etc.
Per the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Bell v. Boise, public camping cannot be banned unless shelter is available - which means public camping can be banned when shelter is available. According to an ACLU legal primer, “It is possible that a city could have enough shelter resources that the homeless population truly has a choice to sleep elsewhere. When reasonable alternatives to outdoor camping exist, enforcement of anti-camping ordinances may not be unconstitutional.” [My italics]
While the top personal income tax rate is quite high in many of these rich European countries (e.g., 57% in Sweden), the top rate kicks in at relatively low levels of income. For instance: under $100,000 for all the Nordic countries….
The private sector can’t do everything – we need government, regulations, and taxes. But why are government agencies so encumbered by bureaucratic inefficiency? Here are some possible reasons:
… It all depends on what else is happening in a country, especially related to other indicators of well-being. For example, if high inequality is coupled with high poverty and low social mobility, then we have three problems. If high inequality is coupled with low poverty and high social mobility, it’s not clear to me that we have a problem.
As if the example of other countries’ healthcare systems weren’t enough for ideas on how to fix the US system, the Urban Institute recently released a report comparing six multi-payer health reforms with two single-payer reform options, including Medicare for All. Care of the Commonwealth Fund, here is a nice summary of the eight possible reforms…
According to the researchers, these emotional reactions are understandable in the context of human evolution. Human emotions evolved to help our ancestors survive and reproduce during a time when conditions were brutal. Emotional reactions served to reinforce behaviors necessary for individual and group survival: warm fuzzies for individuals who demonstrated a willingness to put in the effort, reciprocate, and cooperate; and anger for individuals deemed lazy, selfish or uncooperative.
The most common hate crime bias motivations are, in order: anti-African American, anti-sexual orientation, anti-Jewish, anti-white, anti-Latino, and anti-Islamic. Per the following table, the bias mix shifted in 2018…
Cross-cultural studies have found that most people agree with the following: 1) Distribute resources equally, when need and merit are equal and the rules allow it; 2) Give more to the needy at some threshold of neediness, regardless of merit; 3) If there are agreed upon rules, and resources are allocated unequally based on these rules, that’s okay; and, 4) Merit is partly based on considerations of effort, both quantity and quality.
Why is it taking longer for today’s under-40 set (aka millennials) to accumulate significant wealth? Mostly because they’re delaying marriage and home ownership, which is partly a result of financial constraints and partly a matter of social change. Compared to previous generations of young adults, millennials are staying in college longer, have higher levels of student debt, and face tighter mortgage lending standards. They also tend to live in cities with nonoptimal housing markets.
Wasteful spending on health care is not a trivial problem. It represents resources that could be redirected to, say, higher wages, R & D budgets, affordable housing, or climate change adaptation. Yet it is a problem the political class has pretty much downplayed or ignored, probably because serious spending reform would anger a lot of voters, especially the healthcare workers who lose their jobs or get their pay cut as a result of reform. Luckily, the media and some politicians are finally beginning to grapple with the issue
The challenge of housing the chronically homeless is how to do it without breaking the bank, distorting the local housing market, or incentivizing dependency.
I put this snapshot together, because the original report goes on and on, making it hard to see the forest through the trees. Part of solving a problem is organizing your information into relevant facts. One of the problems I’d like to solve is how to fix chronic homelessness without creating serious problems elsewhere. This is a beginning of that project.
Responsive government is like a doctor treating a patient: sometimes 'wait and see' is the way to go and sometimes active intervention. Either way, the best doctors know how long to give the current approach a chance and when to cut one's losses and try something else. Above all else, the best doctors are not burdened by ego, former convictions, or the tyranny of past investment. They let go.