5 thoughts on “Rent Control”

1. What we really need is Rent Seeking control.

   1. +1000

      But it will never happen. Grifters gotta grift, and politicians love those sweet, sweet bribescampaign contributions.

      1. Which is why bitcoins will never replace currency, can you imagine the “nightmare” if every campaign contribution could be traced?

2. While that would be good, I’d rather see them end tax-funded welfare programs. That’d raise a stink among those who think that being robbed themselves entitles them to steal from others, but the current system is not even remotely sustainable.

3. California’s Proposition 13 is rent-control-in-reality?

   Yeah, yeah and yeah, ol’ Fred Bastiat and all of that and taxation is theft. But the property tax is a de facto rent payment to the government in exchange for the services they provide along with services they don’t provide if you pay it.

   Proposition 13 was well meaning in that in the late 1970s, many Californians saw their assessments go up and up, and many municipalities reaped the tax revenue windfall in not reducing the tax rate, which threatened to make many long-time residents on fixed incomes, or incomes not increasing with the taxes, to have to leave their homes.

   But the consequence is that property owners in the same neighborhood with comparable houses could be paying widely differing amounts of property tax. Maybe allowing homeowners to stay put was a bug and not a feature because it allowed them to stay put rather than selling to someone who needed to live in that location? That this unnecessarily made purchasing a house and then footing the tax bill expensive for newcomers? That this California arrangement functions like rent control in New York City?

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