Look out, it's icky political stuff
Politics and government crud, except John McCain
Now relegated to Blogblivion...Saturday, September 03, 2005
Rest In Peace Your Honor
Via Aziz Poonawalla at Dean’s, Chief Justice Rehnquist has died.
Life gets more interesting by the day.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Social Engineering: Your Mileage May Vary
Glenn caught up with us on the whole SUV issue. Even if you saw his original post, it’s worth returning as he has added massive amounts of links and reader e-mails, focused largely on the safety constraints issue we keep bringing up whenever the “why should anyone need an SUV or minivan” crowd rears its ignorant head.
We’re getting along with the Sentra for now. However, to go to Plymouth last week, we put the stroller in the trunk, and that’s become its new home. It lived in the van, but since that was supposed to be hauled away for possible repair…
The stroller takes the entire trunk. All of it. Barely fits. I had to spend several minutes completely rearranging the tools and such (Deb observed “you’d be a great person to get stranded with."), and had to remove a little of it. The trunk as it was would hold several bags of groceries, or something like a jumbo box of diapers and a few bags.
So. No more trunk.
The car seat takes up almost half of the back seat, in the middle, which is both easier and safer than to one side. If I am alone, there’s plenty of room for stuff, though enough of it and I’m still working around the presence of the car seat. If we are all in the car, we have the space on either side of the car seat, and maybe a little room at Deb’s feet. We’ve had Sadie pretty well surrounded by stuff a couple times.
Now add another kid.
No more room in the back seat. Maybe a diaper bag or two on the floor, but that’s it. They are required to be in car seats or boosters until an absurd age or size, which takes that much more room.
Granted, the specific item taking up the trunk now needn’t remain there, but space there remains limited for stuff that isn’t people. In the longer run, it only barely computes for two small kids. Never mind if there are twins lurking in there, or if there’s a third later. Heck, I’ve seen what it looks like when my sister, brother-in-law, two kids, and all their stuff for traveling are in a minivan. It’s full.
We’re not in the days of the baby riding on mom’s lap in the front seat anymore. All the more so with those dangerous airbags saving us from ourselves. We’re not in the days of the kids tumbling around the back seat any which way. We survived it when we were kids. Ditto for riding in the backs of pickups, as we did many times. That was even kind of a treat. Was it safe? Probably not. Should we encourage people to try to be safer? Sure, no harm in that. Should there be massive regulations propping up the car seat and SUV industries? Not on my planet; maybe on yours.
On my planet, there’s the market and the minds people were born with to weigh costs monetary and otherwise.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
I know, I know, but I couldn’t resist.
Here’s a rather amusing anti-SUV screed from our dear Mr. Sullivan. Normally I wouldn’t note this, as I find it a bit over the top, but since having a child myself I’ve become more and more frustrated with the vehicular requirements inherent in thing in the current regulatory environment. What he suggests is impossible: you can no longer just pack your kids into the back seat and make do, unless you’ve taken care to space your children in such a way that your collection of carseats and boosters fits neatly. I long for simpler days, myself. Any desire I had for a large vehicle has evaporated now that I live in this weird paradise of narrow roads and bad parking. I felt compelled to point out, though, that there are valid reasons for driving such a thing. But I hardly think that driving an SUV, no matter your reason, qualifies you as a traitor.
Fun Straw Poll
Patrick Ruffini has an August Republican straw poll that is quite extensive and interesting. After you vote, you can see the results by state, referring blog, red or blue, etc. The poll has two parts; a list of more likely candidates, and a list of fantasy candidates you might opt to switch to should your candidate of choice enter the race. Condi is doing well, as I would have predicted.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn’t Be Worse?
Via Charles, New London has taken theft to a new low in the aftermath of the absurd Kelo case outcome.
What a disincentive to fight a taking, if this stands! You can fight it and take them to court, but if you do, the value you get is frozen as of the date they originally tried to steal your property, and you owe them rent. When it falls out in their favor, they get the property for even more below the market value, and subtract rent at market value.
Not acceptable. I hope they go to court all over again with this bit of idiocy. The possibility that a taking will be contested and the market value of the property will increase during that time is the price the private developer government pays for our freedom to contest their right to do the particular taking, or to do it for the particular price.
Read the whole article. It’s most enlightening, in a disheartening sort of way.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Friday, July 15, 2005
More on mandatory health insurance
Thre’s a good back-and forth developing in the comments on this post about forcing people to buy health insurance. Steve has also posted a follow-up expanding his argument a bit. He seems convinced that since some of us disagree with him, we must not have understood his post. Or perhaps I’m not understanding this one?
In any case, the elaboration is helpful. And believe it or not, I read the whole entire thing!
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Interesting.
Rehnquist says he’s not retiring.
Normally I’d breathe a sigh of relief that the matter has now been settled. There’s nothing normal about the world anymore, though. I predict that this will only fuel wilder speculation as everybody tries to guess at whether or not his health continues to permit.
Via Viking Pundit
Alrighty, then.
Since the theme of my day today seems to be irritated at the world, now would be a good time to launch a series I’ve been considering for a while.
You see, I’m rapidly losing my patience with the Republican Party. Not that there are any alternatives, really, but on many things big and small my agenda and their agenda don’t meet up. Some of these I was aware of before I signed up. Others are only now becoming clear.
In any case, this disconnect has inspired me to start listing out the ways in which I am a lousy Republican. Some are silly, and some are serious, but it seems that I add to the list almost daily now. Irresitable blog-fodder.
So here you are. Reason I’m a lousy Republican, #1: I’ll never, never boycott Ben & Jerry’s. Ever.
More to come.
Damned stupid, irresponsible, non-rich people!
Looks like Steve Verdon and Mitt Romney think alike. All those damned irresponsible people who don’t buy health insurance need to be dealt with:
Believe it or not there are people out there who don’t buy health insurance on purpose. I think we should basically make such behavior punishable (yes, as in, “I’m sorry, you are just too stupid on this decision so the act of making a decision has been taken away. Now, pick your health insurance or we’ll get really nasty.")
After this baby comes, our health insurance bill every month will be more than our rent. And we don’t exactly live somewhere cheap. (N.B.--That’s without prescription coverage.) A couple grand a year that we likely won’t even qualify for isn’t going to help. Jay recently figured that our total healthcare expenses for the year will run over $11,000. You’ve got to make a hell of a lot of money before that becomes manageable. It’s insane to tell people that a significant percentage of their income just went “poof!” because you deem their choice of how to spend it *stupid*.
And you know, I object philosophically to the gubmint setting people’s spending priorities for them. To some extent they already do, since you have to pay your taxes before anything else or you can wind up in a pretty unpleasant situation. But the solution to the failure of one government program is rarely to institute another one, and that’s what this crazy-ass scheme does.
I also really hate to see anything that discourages self-employment and business creation, and you bet your sweet ass if it becomes a criminal matter not to carry insurance, and individual coverage continues to cost what it does, people like us are going to have to shut down the shop and go to work for the man. Going out on your own will be far too risky if another 10 or 15 percent or more of your income is dedicated to what the government says you must spend it on. That money might be the difference between getting off the ground or not, and it is not *stupid* to take the risk of getting sick in that time and use the money elsewhere. If you’re terrified that someone else might wind up paying, then make it impossible not to pay medical bills the way it’s impossible not to pay your tax bill or your student loans. But leave people the choice.
You know, I’m going to stop, because I could go on about this all fucking day. It’s wrong on a lot of levels, but I take it really personally because I live down here in the part of reality where living without insurance is an option that has to be considered. When it’s that or giving up a business that you’ve poured years of your life into, it doesn’t seem that bad. When it’s that or not paying the heating bill, it seems even better. And you’d better bet that if it ever gets between food and my babies’ mouths, I’ll tell anybody who tells me that I have a moral obligation to society to pay my health insurance bill first to go do something anatomically impossible with themselves.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
I haven’t posted about Kelo lately, but the matter is far from over. You might even say that the political process and the various balances of power are working as they should. Which is not to say it should have required a landmark case and near universal outrage for action to flow in the direction of property rights.
Via Alphecca, via Nashville Files, SCOTUSblog reports on the continuing fallout from Kelo.
The powers that be in Connecticut have placed all local eminent domain plans on hold pending possible changes to the law. This is great:
Rell was harsh in her criticism of the Supreme Court. “This issue,” she said in a statement Monday, “is the 21st Century equivalent of the Boston Tea Party: the government taking away the rights and liberties of property owners without giving them a voice. But this time it is not a monarch wearing robes in England we are fighting—it is five robed justices at the Supreme Court in Washington.”
Referring to the Court’s ruling in the New London case, state Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, a Democrat, told reporters in Hartford: “The legal case is over, but towns in our state exist by virtue of state law...theoretically, we could tell them to stop if that’s what we wanted to do.” In an account of his remarks, the New London newspaper, The Day, quoted Lawlor as saying: “I think we all agree that we want to draw a line to make it impossible to seize private homes simply to benefit a private developer. We want to prohibit it.”
Heh.
Perhap Susette Kelo lost the battle, but in doing so has won the war, benefitting us all.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Friday, July 01, 2005
The Supreme Court Nomination Blog
For your confirmation war watching pleasure, SCOTUSblog has noted that it now has a Supreme Court Nomination Blog. That is where continued discussion of Sandy Swingvote’s retirement will be, as well as presumably the obvious topics of potential and actual nominees and confirmations.
They’ve profiled some potential replacements, including Gonzales.
See also my initial reaction to O’Connor’s retirement in Sandy Swingvote.
Sandy Swingvote
Deb called out to me in the bathroom, “Sandy Swingvote retired!” I love that nickname.
I wasn’t surprised, as we’ve not only been expecting it, but also I had seen the unupdated original of Mary Katharine Ham’s post over at Wizbang.
We’re all excited because things will get very interesting. We need a nominee who is, well, another Thomas. Someone who remembers that we have, like, a Constitution and that it says things pretty plainly and is limiting on government. Not someone in love with precedent at the expense of legitimacy.
Update:
Duh. I forgot to add the rest.
This retirement is notable because it represents the first Supreme Court Justice I can clearly remember being nominated, confirmed, serving, and retiring all in my adult memory.
Listen To The Casual Reply
Nancy Pelosi seems to have started a new cult*: The Supreme Court as God.
What a way to weasel out of openly supporting something unpopular.
* The difference between a cult and a religion is a couple hundred years, so it wouldn’t be a “religion” yet. Kind of like Scientology.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Reason and Revelation
Scof has an interesting take on the Supreme Court’s Ten Commandments decision, on which he would appreciate comments.
Update:
The post link doesn’t seem to work properly with Firefox, but is fine with IE, which is a new one. It’s currently the top post, so easy enough to get it via the main page.
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston’s West End Tragedy
Rob Sama has one of the best Kelo reaction posts I have seen: Remember The West End.
For some reason I was unaware or forgot the whole West End debacle. It’s Scollay Square and the Government Center disaster that always got the press and was talked about in my family. Yet another example of unconstitutional yet court-approved takings. Or to put it another way, blight my ass. It doesn’t matter whether your name is Moses, Rappaport, or Pfizer; the Constitution means what it says and no number of black-robed oligarchs dancing with words can change that.
I am aware of the manner in which Disney approached property acquisition for Disney World, doing it the right way, the way it should be. Trying to avoid the holdouts is always a problem, but it still comes down to the market and whether your value of the property for the intended use matches the current owner’s value perception. And these things are perceptions, not objective facts one can pull out of the ether and grandly pronounce. I’m going to quote some of the meat of Rob’s post:
The issue in Kelo is not whether or not developers could have undertaken such a large-scale project in New London, but whether or not they could afford to do it at market prices. Evidently, they either couldn’t or felt that it would be cheaper to use government fiat instead. But the idea that the development couldn’t otherwise happen is rubbish. If you want proof, I can point you to a San Francisco sized theme park in central Florida.
Consider also, the fact that in an eminent domain taking, the opportunity for competitive bidding is eliminated from the assessment consideration. Imagine for a moment that the developers in New London decided to go the Disney route instead of the eminent domain route. They could have bought up land over time, and developed it as they saw fit when they had acquired enough. But perhaps that timeline is too long for these developers, so instead they make a public offer to all the residents of the area for their homes. They announce that they’ll pay an X% premium over the current market value, contingent on everyone selling, and perhaps with a deadline on the offer. That would enable the residents to band together, and to collectively bargain with the developers. They could solicit competing bids from alternate developers with different visions of what should be built there. And in the end, they would have the opportunity to determine a real market value for the land.
It is impossible, however, for a government to determine what that real value would be without letting market forces do their thing. That’s why this is a real violation of the eminent domain clause of the constitution. Because when transferring private property from one private owner to another private owner, it is impossible to determine what the real market value of the land would be. And therefore, determining just compensation becomes impossible.
That’s what it’s all about: what is just compensation?
When the usage is public and will remove the property from the market for the forseeable future, as in the case of roads, the market value of the property will become null, and there’s justification to using available market data (similar properties in the area, etc.) to determine a value to pay the final private owner, add a modest premium, and call it a deal. When the usage is private, paying the current owner less than the highest paying prospective next owner would be willing to pay is indeed government sponsored theft.
I like the creative option Rob suggested of making a conditional tender offer to a group of property owners. That makes sense, keeping politics out and thwarting extreme holdouts.
Returning to Boston’s West End, Rob linked to this series of pictures, of which the below two show starkly the sheer scale of the theft of the West End property:
Before
After demolition
“Blighted” is not a valid reason to take property for another private, or even a gratuitous public, purpose. One man’s blighted is another man’s castle, which is the topic of another post I have been planning. What we’ve had has been bad. Kelo just made it worse and more open. Yet the awareness it’s generated might have set us on the way to reducing the abuse of eminent domain. We can hope.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Update:
Added to today’s Beltway Traffic Jam
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
I’ve been sitting on these links for a couple days, waiting to get around to composing a post and making connections between disparate government policies encroaching on property. The people who say Kelo V. New London is just another brick in the wall are right, as far as it goes, but wrong in the “why be excited?” department. There’s always a last straw. There’s always the step that takes you over the cliff, where the previous steps merely walked you to the cliff’s edge. Sometimes the first step is the cliff. Sometimes the first straw is the backbreaker. Not always though. Perhaps not even frequently.
What we have here is a variant on what one of Jeff Goldstein’s commenters, George Gaskell, brilliantly wrote:
First they took our right to secede from the Union, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Southerner;
Then they came to take our money and instead issue only paper, and I did not speak out--
because I did not have very much gold;
Then they came for a tax on our incomes, and I did not speak out--
because I was not wealthy;
Then they came to socialize my retirement and health care, and I did not speak out--
because I was going to be old one day;
Then they came for my property--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
You could rewrite that with steps specific to the last part: property.
Are you familiar with IOLTA? I work for lawyers, so I knew there were checking accounts called IOLTA accounts. I’ve long wondered what the acronym stood for, finally remembering to Google it last week.
It stands for “interest on lawyer trust accounts.” Not the sort of thing I was expecting. All I knew was that one of their purposes was to handle real estate transactions, and that they absolutely had to balance impeccably or something was wrong in an “I could be in big trouble for this” sort of way.
There’s more to it than that. CATO has some history, and this article by Skip Oliva has more, particularly regarding a Supreme Court decision in a case called Phillips v. Washington Legal Foundation.
IOLTA accounts were created as a scheme to generate interest on transient client funds handled by lawyers, funneling the money to organizations run by state bar associations. Technically the interest belongs to the clients. The combination of the interest not existing until the advent of IOLTA, and presumably never had it not been created, and the fact it goes to the “good cause” of legal services for the poor means the government-sponsored theft was upheld.
Is there something worse than eminent domain, even used for unconstitutional purposes or without adequate compensation? Indeed there is, and it’s all in the name of the drug war for our own good. No more cash for you. If you carry an amount of cash the authorities deem too much, they can simply take it. They don’t even have to find drugs or charge you. If you have a lot of cash, it must be from drugs. This is outrageous on the face of it, without even looking to the Constitution for guidance.
Perhaps in the post-Kelo world, people who are outraged by one type of property rights destruction will pay attention to all of them. Think “fundamental interconnectedness of all things” people. Just because your pet violation of property is for a good cause doesn’t make it right while another is wrong. They all amount to the same thing: Evil. Anti-human, anti-life evil.
Kelo opens the floodgates of private projects that can’t bear the market, so enlist political help instead. A form of welfare, if you will. Freeport, for one, barely let the whiteout on the Fifth amendment dry before employing its license to steal.
It’s all related. It’s all wrong. Never forget that.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Monday, June 27, 2005
Running for President, or Just on Crack: You Decide
I saw this almost a week ago, and just now got a chance to post it:
Massachusetts residents who choose not to obtain health insurance would face tax penalties and even the garnishing of their wages under a proposal Governor Mitt Romney unveiled yesterday.
If you incur medical costs you can’t pay because you’re uninsured, Romney has a deal for you:
Currently, people without health insurance often go to hospitals and receive care they never pay for, because the hospital and the state pick up the tab. Under Romney’s proposal, uninsured Massachusetts residents would be asked to enroll in a plan when they seek care.
If they refuse, the state could recoup the medical costs in several ways, Romney said yesterday: The state might cancel the personal tax exemption on their state income taxes, which is worth about $175. It could withhold some or all of their state income tax refund and deposit it in what Romney called a ‘’personal healthcare spending account.” Or, it might take money out of the person’s paycheck, as it does now to collect child support.
Why?
Although Romney began rolling out his healthcare proposals last fall, he has never before called for an individual mandate. In a telephone interview with the Globe after yesterday’s speech, he said he decided to include the requirement after concluding that his other proposals could make private insurance affordable for everyone. (Emphasis mine.)
Uh, huh. But that isn’t even the funniest bit. This is:
‘’It’s the ultimate conservative idea, which is that people have responsibility for their own care, and they don’t look to government to take of them if they can afford to take care of themselves,” Romney told reporters after his speech.
Oh, yes, it’s terribly conservative to create elaborate schemes to subsidize your madness your Presidential bid insurance so you can claim that you’ve made it affordable for everyone. And it’s terribly conservative to mandate that people buy it since you know so well what people can and can’t afford. Because, you know, Mitt’s looked at your checkbook and he knows you’re holding out on him. See?
‘’No more ‘free riding,’ if you will, where an individual says: ‘I’m not going to pay, even though I can afford it. I’m not going to get insurance, even though I can afford it. I’m instead going to just show up and make the taxpayers pay for me,’ “ Romney told reporters after a healthcare speech at the John F. Kennedy Library.
Because that happens so often. Because most people go buy a Mercedes instead of health insurance. Because everyone relishes being chased by bill collectors. Because if you’re uninsured, you’re uninsured because you just don’t think you ought to have to pay for things. Because...oh, never mind.
The sad part is, he’s what passes for a Republican around here. It’s like the worst of both worlds. Sigh.
Via Libertyblog, where they’re also unimpressed.
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Via Arnold Kling, both Gary Becker and Richard Posner have interesting thoughts on Kelo and eminent domain at The Becker-Posner Blog.
It’s not exactly light reading, but most of this stuff isn’t, and I’ve seen worse. They are detailed, rational commentaries worth reading if you have an interest in the topic.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Some have suggested boycotting Pfizer, the primary private beneficiary of Kelo V. New London. I could as easily suggest boycotting Crate & Barrel, and it would be easier…
Reading through the list of Pfizer products, at first I was delighted that none of them looked familiar. Then I got to the over the counter list and saw… Listerine. Doh! I use that almost daily, and swear by it. I had no clue that was them. But wait! So is Sudafed. And Zantec. At least those two OTC drugs I buy in generics, which may or may not actually be manufactured by someone else.
I’m sure some of the products there will be familiar to you, and as hard to give up.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Rents, Housing and Inflation
I played with the constant dollar adjustments in this post of mine some more, and it seems rents have done somewhat the same as real estate prices. That only makes sense, given the relationship, if not a fully elastic one, between the two.
My first apartment was $225 a month plus utilities. It was considerably larger than this one, and indeed would be as close to perfect for us as we could get. I wonder if Ray Clark, my old landlord and all around good guy, is still around. In that place, the smallest room was the size of the second largest room here. The other four were larger. It had a walk-in pantry that more than made up for the modest amount of kitchen cabinets. It had an unfinished sixth room for entry and storage, that probably the size of our smallest room here, and an open porch/deck area.
Based only on inflation, the current rent for that apartment would be $477. That’s less than $1000. By sheer coincidence of numbers, converting this rent backward to then would mean paying $477 in 1981 money. I’m sure there were large and luxurious apartments renting for that much then, as mine was a little low even for the time, but it would have been high end.
In current dollars, my income then would be about 24.5k now. Indeed, once I started college in 1982, it took me until 1994 to get back to that kind of money and beyond, in real terms.
So for a person making my okay but still a relative newcomer to the job market income, rent in 1981 was , say 23-odd percent of gross income. The same rent today is, say, 49% of gross income. That is, actual rent today compared to adjusted for inflation income of a person at a similar stage of life, renting a comparable apartment.
It doesn’t compute.
This is one more reason I don’t “get” how the real estate market can carry on merrily as it has been. I’ve long known a disparity existed. I just never quantified it before.
It’s not intentionally a siphoning of money from younger to older the way social security is, but it tends to work out that way. But why? Based on inflation, a $300,000 house now should have cost $143,000 in 1981. A $40,000 house in 1981 should cost $84,000 today. Why the disparity?
Is it all due to the addition of women to the workforce? Well, in the form of two-earner couples, anyway. That seems a bit extreme, as unintended consequences go. If there are kids, daycare eats most of it until government provided babysitting kicks in, and even then there’s part of the cost until they’re old enough to be on their own. There’s extra taxes. In our case, it would be a way to generate a couple hundred bucks a month in exchange for a far worse lifestyle. Depends on the jobs, and I know it fuels things to a point.
It can’t all be due to the increases in typical home sizes and amenities, or the improvements in construction and technology. After all, that would only apply to newer construction.
I don’t even think it can all be explained by population pressure with respect to where people want or need to live, though that may be the largest component of all.
So what’s the deal? How long can we go on without the disparity coming to a head?
But I digress. I didn’t intend to go off on the real estate bubble angle.
(I wrote the above yesterday and am no longer sure what, if anything, I’d meant to add, so I’ll post it and I can always pick up the topic in a later post. Plus we need to start getting ready to go have dinner, and cake for my grandmother.)
Previous cost of living post:
Then and Now
Previous housing bubble posts:
Toil and Trouble
What’s the Real State of Real Estate?
Housing Bubble
Housing Bubble?
Housing Bubble?
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Public Service Announcement
Dana provides a timely public service announcement for those who don’t quite know how to respond appropriately to news of a pregnancy. “Oh no!� is definitely right out as a reaction, as is anything that amounts to the same thing in more syllables.
One thing she left out is the obvious response to people who think you are having too many kids. Who do you think is going to pay all that social security? Well, up until the point when it collapses under the weight of current and near future retirees.
Hey, there’s a reason the government so encourages children! With just one, and no house, my taxes on an above average income dropped almost to nothing. Well, except for the several thousand in social security taxes that don’t go down for anything. Uncle Sam needs all those kids to keep the scheme going, at least until the current crop of politicians are safely retired from protecting their tenure in office, leaving others to toss the ultimate entitlement hot potato until it drops, splattering on the floor of the real world.
Anyway, go read Dana’s post. It’s funny without digressing into the intergenerational politics of reproduction and wealth transfer. Hormonal, too. Deb knows all about hormonal. Which means so do I.
And Besides, Congress Has Better Things To Worry About
Jim at Parkway Rest Stop has a superlative flag burning post that’s a must read if you are at all confused over why such an Amendment, or law, would be wrong.
He’s a member of the American Legion, which has raised money and campaigned for such an Amendment. In the post, he describes his sometimes successful efforts to change minds one member at a time.
The only thing I can say in favor of the flag burning Amendment is that if people truly want it to be illegal, which they don’t, it’s the legitimate way to achieve it. The Court correctly ruled that laws against it are unconstitutional. The only way around that is an Amendment that says “...except for this...� with respect to the First Amendment.
Anyway, go and read Jim’s post, even if you’re already opposed to the Amendment. It’s good stuff.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Kelo and “Fair” Value
I essentially wrote my next planned Kelo post as a comment to this post over at PoliBlog, in which Steven Taylor links to the good Stephen Bainbridge TCS article on Kelo and, among other things, the effective transfer of property value from forced seller to the government-aided new owner.
I’d been thinking about those implications as well, and even about my old college paper on value. Particularly the title/intro saying “the value of a thing is what that thing will bring.”
Anyway, here is what I wrote over at PoliBlog, since it’s basically what I had in mind besides the intro:
I haven’t written my seventh Kelo-related post yet, but I planned one on the valuation and “fair” price angle.
The perceived problem people have with allowing the market to work is that someone’s price to budge may seem totally out of whack, influenced either by considerations like nostalgia, or by taking advantage of knowing they are the holdout preventing the thing from happening at all or in recognizably the desired way.
However, a transaction and judgment of value is between two parties. It is not imposed by one on the other, even attempting to be “fair” and extrapolate from what is typical for the objective attributes of the property.
Allowing the political process to intervene in acquiring property for private purposes is a short circuiting of market forces, however capricious they may seem. Because it is a private transaction, the market, and the subjective value of the prospective buyers and sellers, should always prevail. To do otherwise pushes the United States as originally conceived, and as we’ve more or less known it, rapidly toward its demise.
As long-time readers may recall, even the core concept of eminent domain bothers me, but I can live with it for things like roads that are run by the government. We’re not societally tabula rasa, and such a state is seldom if ever going to become available to people, so wishing roads were all private or obviated by technology isn’t gong to make it so any time soon. As things are, a transaction between a unit of government and an unwilling seller of real estate will never be a market transaction. All we can hope for is minimal and carefully thought out need, and reasonable compensation. At least another private owner will not reap subjective or future increases of value lost to the victim of the taking.
There is no compelling need for government to intervene to plan or obtain property for private developments. If the rationale is increasing tax revenue, that’s purely statist. If the rationale is to help create jobs in a participatory way, rather than by stepping aside and making economic development easier, that’s purely statist. But I digress. The point is to let the market be the market, such as it is. There’s no other way for the value to the seller and the buyer to be “fair.â€?
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Update:
Added to today’s Beltway Traffic Jam.
Olek V. New London Case
In all the fuss over Kelo, we’ve missed another important decision. Luckily we have Coyote Blog all over this one. From the cited article reporting Olek V. New London:
The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people’s advertising space—even against their will—for alternate advertisers who promote economic development or higher taxes.
Once again, O’Connor was a dissenter:
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who has been a key swing vote on many cases before the court, issued a stinging dissent. She argued that “This makes me so mad, I could, I could… aw, forget it. I’m retiring this year to a Pacific island anyway, so y’all are free to screw up this country as much as you want”.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
I’ve so far made four posts on the topic of Kelo V. New London, and four updates to boot. They were:
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Well, five, if you count my being inspired about a Constitutional Convention and toying with the idea of snagging the relevant domain.
This is another such post regarding, or at least inspired by, the Kelo decision. It will not be the last, or even the last today. If the topic bores you, feel free to skip these, but it really should interest galvanize everyone, the caveat provided by Justice Kennedy notwithstanding.
Anyway, I mentioned, in an IANAL (nor do I play one on TV) sort of way, the bizarre practice the Supremes have followed in allowing bad precedent to build on bad precedent, with nary a nod to the “source code” in the Constitution.
As it turns out, Skip Oliva just recently posted about the problem of what is known as stare decisis; “the longstanding policy of common law courts to adhere to precedent irrespective of its merits.”
His post, at Mises Economics Blog, was inspired by Raich, which relied similarly to the later Kelo decision on bad precedent, rather than actual Constitutionality. As he told me yesterday:
Today’s Kelo decision only accentuates the need to deal with the problem of “stare decisis.”
I wanted to give this a proper post, rather than a quick link, so I delayed it until today.
This is not only not a new issue, it is downright ancient, and was in the thoughts of the founding fathers. He quotes at lenth from Thomas Paine, in small part:
Government by precedent, without any regard to the principle of the precedent, is one of the vilest systems that can be set up. In numerous instances, the precedent ought to operate as a warning, and not as an example, and requires to be shunned instead of imitated; but instead of this, precedents are taken in the lump, and put at once for constitution and for law.
Either the doctrine of precedents is policy to keep a man in a state of ignorance, or it is a practical confession that wisdom degenerates in governments as governments increase in age, and can only hobble along by the stilts and crutches of precedents. How is it that the same persons who would proudly be thought wiser than their predecessors, appear at the same time only as the ghosts of departed wisdom? How strangely is antiquity treated! To some purposes it is spoken of as the times of darkness and ignorance, and to answer others, it is put for the light of the world.
It’s an excellent post, and an excellent point being made. It concludes, remember pre-Kelo, with respect mainly to Raich at the time:
There is also the question, under a doctrine of precedents, whether even the Supreme Court can overrule its prior decisions. A number of justices have maintained over the years that after a certain period of time, an erroneous decision must be respected by the Court to prevent a loss of public confidence in the judiciary. This was the majority’s justification for reaffirming Roe v. Wade in 1992.
When faced with a decision as constitutionally baseless as Raich, the lower courts should make every effort to expose the flaws in the Supreme Court’s reasoning and precedents. Such behavior will no doubt be condemned as “judicial activism� by conservatives (and many leftists), but that is a false argument. True judicial activism occurs when a court exercises jurisdiction in a case without proper constitutional or statutory authority. That was the basic lesson of Marbury v. Madison. Similarly, a commitment to judicial restraint requires the federal courts to dismiss as unconstitutional any federal prosecution of a person accused of illegally growing marijuana for medicinal purposes, yesterday’s Supreme Court decision to the contrary notwithstanding.
Yet oh so applicable in either case, and beyond.
It makes sense that precedent was a known problem at the time of the Revolution. English common law was all about precedent. Whatever inspiration we may have drawn from it, this is the United States, not the United Kingdom.
Perhaps the Court forgetting who and what we are is the root of the problem.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Rights, Dissent… What’s Not To Crush?
While we were all distracted by the Raich and Kelo travesties, the absurd flag burning amendment, and the silly Durbin and Rove puff-ups, Congress was lubing up the slippery slope, dangerously crushing porn. Crushing it under rules and reams of paper. Don’t like porn? Well, mind precedent and the slippery slope. The government won’t use lube elsewhere when they come for you.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Will the Money Be Followed?
Now that the Supremes have given the Constitutional Seal of Approval to seizing private real property for any reason whatsoever, crony capitalism has become likewise Constitutionally protected. Just follow the money in the Kelo case - I have no doubt that a substantial amount made its way from the developer to the city officials who pushed the property condemnation through.
I’ve been thinking along the same lines. I wonder how long it will take for someone - hello the watchdog press? - to start investigating all the relevant officials and influential “pushers” in an effort to follow said money or other means of undue persuasion.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Constitutional Convention
Just for giggles, I investigated the availability of constitutionalconvention.com, only to find it was already taken. Oh well. And no, I am not going to offer to purchase it from the speculator current owner.
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts (Updated)
Via Rand Simberg, here another angle on what the fallout from Kelo can reasonably be expected to be. In addition to my thinking about what it could do to the real estate market, there is the possibility of using this decision to take out previously safe “we just don’t like it” real estate uses…
Private gun ranges, airfields, RV tracts, hunting preserves, fishing resources, minority religious congregations, newspapers—all are now fair targets for seizure and closure “for the economic benefit of the people.
Let the games begin. The goal: don’t live in the wrong place or use your property for the wrong purpose without adequate payoff to or influence with the powers that be, and don’t get the wrong people mad at you for some reason unrelated to that which they will invent for seizing your property in retaliation.
Update:
On the other hand, analysis at SCOTUSblog of Kennedy’s concurring opinion seems to indicate that communities may not get away with running roughshod. I guess we’ll see…
Another Update:
SCOTUSblog has a metablog discussion specifically for Kelo and related issues.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Bad Precedent
Another thought I had about the Kelo decision is that they seem to be going by precedent.
Think about it: Do you go back to the Constitution and use that as the supreme arbiter, or do you go primarily with precedent, even if it’s wrong?
This is the most recent in a string of related decisions, and owes the absurd outcome to those decisions. But… how is that right when a given decision can be wrong, or not in keeping with the philosophy of a particular Court? And what’s philosophy got to do with it anyway? Either you can read and are willing to uphold the Constitution, or not. They are not, whether it’s about wheat, marijuana, or the sanctity of your property. Which, come to think of it, is what those cases all had in common.
Not that you ever really own real estate, since you rent it for property taxes and it can be taken if you fail to pay. The locality, in a sense, owns it in the first place, but still, you “own” the right to use it as you see fit and to pay that rent-like tax. The Constitution doesn’t give them the right to evict you for just any reason. At least, it didn’t until some feeble-minded oligarchs weighed in.
Glenn has an additional post on the case, discussing political ramifications and the like.
As mentioned at the end of my previous post, go to Arguing With Signposts for the most comprehensive link roundup.
Coyote Blog has a good post on the topic, which he has covered for some time.
Really. Let’s start throwing out bad precedent, and get us some judges who aren’t afraid to question those who came before them.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?