Why We Should Teach Econ. 101 in Kindergarten…
…because we are dealing with Kindergartners:
If you’ve never been to an RGB meeting, it’s a unique political spectacle. The board members take turns reading speeches — when we arrived, one of the tenants’ advocates was making an impassioned plea to freeze the rent increases. She was interrupted several times with shouts of support from the audience. After she finished, one of the landlords’ advocates began to read his statement. He was drowned out every couple of minutes by shouts and organized chanting from the audience. Many members of the audience brought their own banners and signs, and waved them gleefully for the media assembled around the edges of the room. Most of the reporters had that glazed look they tend to get when there isn’t much happening and they are watching something they’ve seen a thousand times before.
The “RGB” is the Rent Guidelines Board, a central planning bureaucracy that sets rates for about half the rental apartments in New York City. And while we have not seen this phenomenon “a thousand times before,” we have in fact been seeing it since World War II, when the “temporary” and “emergency” rent stabilization program was first implemented. And we have, of course, suffered chronic housing shortages in New York City ever since. Go figure.
I won’t pen yet another diatribe about the (rather elementary) economics of rent regulation — been there, done that. What I want to note here is two other observations. First is the hopeless economic ignorance of these brats — most of whom couldn’t draw a supply-and-demand graph, let alone explain it.
Price ceilings create shortages. I can explain it to you in five minutes with one piece of scrap paper. And it’s not a question of policy, but a question of fact — economic laws are akin to the laws of physics. And no banners or speeches or protests or screeches can change that.
Second, what does it say about people who mark their calendars for the sole purpose of throwing temper tantrums? What precisely does it accomplish to drown out a landlord RGB representative — who is trying to convey information — with wailing shrieks and other manifestations of rude behavior? What cause are they serving by being jackasses? Whatever their purpose, alleviating the housing crisis certainly isn’t one of them.
It’s perfectly reasonable not to be an activist. It is not at all reasonable to become an activist and then dedicate your efforts to serving as mere background noise. That is not the activism of a reformer … it’s the activism of a pre-schooler.
More on the uncivil attendees from the New York Times.
—
One sign at the RGB sandbox:
Well no, actually prices are costs, since “profit” is not simply some residual to be found and looted like buried treasure, but rather a return to a factor of production no different than wages or interest. That factor of production is called entrepreneurship — and it requires an extraordinary amount of entrepreneurship to own property as a business. Anyone who doubts that should ask whether simply owning one’s own home is an effortless proposition. Then extrapolate to owning dozens or even hundreds of homes. Who could be so obnoxious as to suggest that landlords do not deserve profits or that “prices are not costs”?
The answer: only those who want something for nothing. And there’s a word for people who want something for nothing, like these undisciplined housing “activists”:
Greedy.
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The odd thing is that there are many well educated New Yorkers who nonetheless insist that rent regulation/control is a necessary thing.
This population of well-educated people to whom I am referring includes lawyers, doctors, bankers and other assorted white collar professionals I have heard over the years.
Education itself is not the solution. Making these white collar professionals landlords of rent controlled apartments would go a long way to getting them to come around to your thinking.
Economics (along with Poli-Sci) is one of the two most important social sciencies that every student should learn. In reality these two are the least understood and barely taught in today's public schools. Its doubtful that there is some grand conspiracy to ensure the ignorance of future generations by not teaching these subjects but the results are the same nonetheless…
This is just nuts that they can't draw the conclusion between the economics of this situation.
I can't understand why people can't do a little research on their own these days. Is that a product of the school system? I wouldn't doubt that it is.
One of the realities I've been slowly coming to grips with lately is the fact that most people simply aren't interested in economics or politics. And if you're not interested in them, if you don't study them for the fun of it, then what incentive do you have to study them?
To cast a better vote? Let's be honest. Everyone reading this right now studies them for the fun of it, not because it helps us get better policies. My vote has never gotten me a better policy.
(Kip went to law school and took the bar for the fun of it, that's remarkable)
We can teach it in the classrooms but it will have little effect. The ideas underlying Econ 101 are simple. I don't think the problem is that people lack exposure to 101. The problem is that they don't retain or allow any of it to sink in. Because they have no reason to.
Not necessarily…We study math and language in school, not so much because we enjoy it, though some of us do, but because it is essential to survive in the world…the problem is most people don't realize (or care) how important subjects like econ and Poli-Sci are and tehy are worse off because of it…
I don't blame these people. They are acting rationally and in their own interest. The government is giving them a free lunch and they don't want it taken away. Can you blame them?
What I don't understand are the people who DON'T have rent control apartments and STILL support it. Utterly irrational.