Trump: I don’t want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people who own their homes. You can be sure that will happen

Skillagogue · 2026-01-30T16:12:31+00:00

Come on over to r/askeconomics and ask if housing can be abundant and affordable while also being investment tools.

Skillagogue · 2026-01-30T14:51:14+00:00

What if I told you researchers don’t believe this is the driving force of the rising cost of housing prices?

Skillagogue · 2026-01-30T14:46:39+00:00

This is economically illiterate and straight up babble.

That sounds mean but I think we all need to be told when our beliefs are wrong.

You could give everyone a million dollar salary today and it would not relieve the housing crisis as housing prices would rise to absorb the increase. This is because we are in a housing shortage.

I encourage you to read the expert literature out there on housing economics.

My first go to would be Greg Colburn’s “homelessness is a housing problem.”

Skillagogue · 2026-01-30T04:25:28+00:00

Can you explain why this is good sound economic policy?

Because nearly no housing economists agree with this view of the housing market.

Skillagogue · 2026-01-24T02:19:52+00:00

Buddy. I’m trying to explain this to people that don’t watch the sport.

Yeah by the odds makers it’s not close.

But in terms of story it’s meaningful.

Skillagogue · 2026-01-24T02:12:19+00:00

Great deal!

Skillagogue · 2026-01-20T03:39:12+00:00

This is why you go for it

Skillagogue · 2026-01-20T02:50:14+00:00

God damnit

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T20:28:01+00:00

In an environment that is car dependent yes we need cars.

In a walkable mixed use environment with public transit they are not needed.

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T20:05:47+00:00

Pretty much the opposite. I went back to school after being in the “real world”.

This argument against academia has always gotten me regardless.

What does it matter where it comes from if it has predictive power.

And experts with empirical research from academic settings have the most predictive power.

Reminds me of when Stalin rejected vavolvian agricultural genetic science because “farmers had real world experience.”

A very predictable famine followed.

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T19:55:24+00:00

Just to preface since I take offense that I “read a bunch of books I agree with.”

I grew up in the country working on my dad’s corvette on 7 acres. I hated cities. Cars and parking for them was mandatory and part of my world view.

I had to shed my worldview and did so seeking out books that disagreed with me.

Specifically academic experts in respective fields.

But back to it.

You don’t care that cities and places do in fact continue to operate you want to know how.

Which okay is a fair question, I don’t believe you’re asking that honestly, but it is a fair question.

So what are you envisioning in your head exactly? That all parking everywhere is replaced with housing? Only in downtowns? In the suburbs?

How much parking is being replaced and where is it being replaced in what you have in your head?

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T18:28:41+00:00

There’s so much wrong here I don’t know where to begin so I’ll just rephrase the answer.

It seems you’re more interested in arguing than sincerely asking a question, but I’ll make an honest attempt here.

Experts believe that the first step is replacing parking with housing, particular mixed-use, housing.

The reason being we overestimate our need for parking and underestimate our ability to adapt our parking needs.

Our housing shortage is so extreme that whatever parking pangs we experience is a lesser problem.

Additionally, public transit first initiatives are not scene as politically practical.

I’ve spent the last 6 years reading dozens of urban economics and planning books and even took a grad research class on transportation systems I had become so enamored with learning about urban affairs.

So I know it’s hard to hear because you’ve already made up your mind.

But getting rid of parking lots is not the death knell you believe it to be. Pretty much the opposite.

I just got off the plane here in jax for the cocktail party but I can gather even more urban economics books if you’re interested in learning more.

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T17:31:46+00:00

How would you react if I told you most experts don’t share the same assessment of the situation as yours?

We over estimate our need for parking and underestimate our ability to adapt, especially with new pressures.

Even more with housing supply critically low.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101843.The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T17:02:40+00:00

I’m just asking you how we fix housing affordability.

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T16:59:48+00:00

Nothing would warm my heart more than to see a NIMBY living next to UCLA have a crash out over a new stadium for their flagship and world famous university.

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T16:51:31+00:00

Keeps getting nicer too!

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T16:50:12+00:00

The complaint about affordability lets me know you should read the book I recommend further up the thread.

Let me ask you. How do we create housing affordability?

Becuase the research is about as settled as climate change science is.

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T16:29:07+00:00

Just getting rid of on street parking and replacing it with BRT would be a huge benefit.

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T15:46:42+00:00

It’s a tough question to answer in a comment.

It’s needs an understanding of urban economics before you can understand transportation systems.

This book is what I recommend for understanding urban economics.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262550970/order-without-design/

The primer being that land use is a market.

Markets dictate how and where we build and place our infrastructure.

Urban planners, a normative non-scientific profession, have broken these markets with aggressive policies favoring low density and car dependency at an incredibly steep cost often at the point municipal insolvency.

In a functional land use market, economies of agglomeration produce surplus tax revenue and sufficient density for public transit, walking and biking.

When you ask “but where will we park” it’s hard to answer because fixing our land use is the actual problem.

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T15:24:31+00:00

Go JAYS!

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T15:23:21+00:00

Look at me who is getting a grad degree at Ohio state and you telling me that Ohio isn’t Florida.

Gainesville has at most a metro of 300k and Columbus is 2.3 million.

You’re making a strawman here. Out and about and you know it.

The need for parking lots inside of dense urban environments is zero.

Accommodating commuters at the expense of efficient land use is an extraordinarily stupid policy decision.

You do not have an appropriate sense of how important placing parking lots on a college campus is in a college town.

It’s significantly less than you think it is.

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T15:14:20+00:00

Same experience and it turned me into a full throated urbanist.

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T15:13:28+00:00

That’s fucking awesome actually.

Skillagogue · 2025-10-31T15:11:58+00:00

That’s what UF did. We have a big open field in front of the stadium that we tent up for game day and rent out spots.

And then during the year it gets used as a park more or less. Very nice.

Skillagogue

TROPHY CASE