A Fatal Conceit
Why is affording things so terribly devilish? One answer, according to Barton Swaim, may be that a growing economy offers so many worthwhile but nonessential goods and services to spend one’s money on. Politico had a new poll last month painting a grim picture of a nation under financial strain, noting that “nearly half of Americans said they find groceries, utility bills, health care, housing and transportation difficult to afford.”
Ordinary people, notes Mr. Swaim in the WSJ, are rarely happy with the prices of things, since prices of things in general tend to go up over time. A growing economy tends to offer many worthwhile goods and services, along with many nonessential items.
Progressive politicians, almost by definition, believe they know more or less the right prices for goods and services at any given time: namely, below whatever they are in the real world. At no time are prices about right for the “working families” whose feelings and attitudes (Elizabeth) Warren claims to understand.
Subjectiveness
Media analyses of the affordability issues regularly and inadvertently highlight the subjectivity of the matter, claims Ms. Warren.
Swaim by no means dismisses the stress and suffering occasioned by rising prices—especially prices unnecessarily elevated by stupid political decisions.
The salient point, rather, is that politicos’ talk about “affordability” involves the tacit premise that they know the morally just price of products and services. To grant them that premise is to give them the authority to punish supposed bad guys—corporations, the wealthy—and cut governmental checks to their favored constituencies.
Swaim makes his case that with heightened unaffordability, its causes are governmental.
Inflation, another word for rising prices, exploded in 2022 and peaked in June of that year at 9.1%, the highest in 40 years—because the Biden administration and Democrats flooded the economy with cash. Housing, energy and healthcare prices are higher than they might have been otherwise, similarly, because Democratic regulations on all three make their provision more expensive.
Hard to Explain
In the case of healthcare, 17 House Republicans last week joined Democrats in voting to extend ObamaCare subsidies. Easier to spend more of other people’s money and make the problem seem to go away.
The Affordability Rhetoric
Vice President JD Vance, speaking in rural PA last month, blamed inflation on Biden-era policies, but he mostly picked the wrong ones.
Mr. Vance rightly faulted the Democrats’ energy regulations but otherwise blamed illegal immigration and, in a flourish Ms. Warren would have liked, the avarice of pharmaceutical executives.
Illegal Immigration
Illegal immigrants did not increase housing prices. And, yes, Joe Biden did allow 20 million of them to enter. Of all the reasons for rising home prices, Mr. Vance picked the least plausible one.
Granted, Vance isn’t in a position to point out the role of tariffs in raising construction costs, but he might have named building regulations or mortgage lock-in or environmental rules. Easier to fulminate.
“Unaffordability is a feature of human life in a fallen world,” reasons Barton Swaim.
That Democratic policies have lately exacerbated it doesn’t liberate Republicans from the obligation to explain some basic economics.
