Tag Archives: Housing

What economic policies do left-wing and right-wing economists agree on?

This article is from Harvard economist Greg Mankiw. (H/T Michael)

Excerpt:

Here is the list, together with the percentage of economists who agree:

  1. A ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available. (93%)
  2. Tariffs and import quotas usually reduce general economic welfare. (93%)
  3. Flexible and floating exchange rates offer an effective international monetary arrangement. (90%)
  4. Fiscal policy (e.g., tax cut and/or government expenditure increase) has a significant stimulative impact on a less than fully employed economy. (90%)
  5. The United States should not restrict employers from outsourcing work to foreign countries. (90%)
  6. The United States should eliminate agricultural subsidies. (85%)
  7. Local and state governments should eliminate subsidies to professional sports franchises. (85%)
  8. If the federal budget is to be balanced, it should be done over the business cycle rather than yearly. (85%)
  9. The gap between Social Security funds and expenditures will become unsustainably large within the next fifty years if current policies remain unchanged. (85%)
  10. Cash payments increase the welfare of recipients to a greater degree than do transfers-in-kind of equal cash value. (84%)
  11. A large federal budget deficit has an adverse effect on the economy. (83%)
  12. A minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers. (79%)
  13. The government should restructure the welfare system along the lines of a “negative income tax.” (79%)
  14. Effluent taxes and marketable pollution permits represent a better approach to pollution control than imposition of pollution ceilings. (78%)

I wonder which political party believes in most or all of these positions?

Hmmmmn.

Let’s learn economics using videos from Thomas Sowell

ECM sent me these videos from the Uncommon Knowledge web site. Tom Sowell is the official economist of the Tea Party movement.

Part 1 of 5: (Housing Boom and Bust)

Part 2 of 5: (Quantitative Easing and Tax Cuts)

Part 3 of 5: (Health Care)

Part 4 of 5: (Trade, Trade Deficit, Protectionism, Tariffs)

Part 5 of 5: (The Federal Reserve, Bailouts, Keynes)

The fourth edition of his new book is out! Only $25 or less. (One of my readers bought it for me for Christmas, so please don’t buy me one!)

You can translate youtube videos into MP3 using the “vidtomp3” web site. Or I could make them FOR YOU!

UPDATE: Within 5 minutes somebody asked me to make the MP3s for them. So here you go if you don’t like YouTube.

These are low-quality so they could be smaller.

UPDATE: Commenter Jim says:

Downloads of Sowell’s interview are also available in both audio MP3 and video M4V formats.

New-home sales plunge 33% to record low in May

Story from CBS Marketwatch. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Sales of new single-family homes plunged 33% in May to a record-low level after a federal subsidy for home buyers expired, according to data released Wednesday by the Commerce Department.

Sales dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 300,000, the lowest since records began in 1963. April’s sales pace was revised down to 446,000 compared with the 504,000 originally reported. March’s sales were also revised lower.

The results were much worse than expected, and economists had expected a 20% decline to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 405,000.

[…]Sales fell sharply in all four regions, with sales down more than 50% in the West.

The median sales price in May was $200,900, down 9.6% from a year earlier and the lowest since December 2003.

[…]Housing data in May have been dismal. Housing starts fell 10%, building permits fell 5.9%, mortgage applications dropped, and the home builders’ index fell by five points. The only bright spot was mortgage rates, which stayed very low.

Obama’s solution to this problem was government spending in the form of an $8000 federal tax credit “stimulus” for people who bought homes between February and April. How did that government-run top-down Keynesian stimulus solution work out?

Excerpt:

The tax credit likely pulled many sales forward into the first four months of the year. Sales increased a cumulative 29% between February and April. But once the credit expired, sales collapsed in May.

I guess maybe they were hoping to “prime the pump” which of course doesn’t work any more than “cash for clunkers” works.