15 Comments
User's avatar
Varado en DC's avatar

Noah says it is pure coincidence that healthcare cost decrease after passage of ACA was "coincidence"?

I have a strong reaction against that statement.

I'm not sure how I would go about gathering the data to look into this, but as someone who has worked in nine different countries and has seen both the utter insanity and the amazing capabilities of the American healthcare system I look forward to an informed examination of this issue.

Peter Drucker suggested you cannot improve what you cannot measure, in the case of healthcare perhaps just the threat of measurement was enough to curb some of the worst abuses.

Expand full comment
mike harper's avatar

I googled around and found that YIMBY and Abundance have common features. YIMBY is a Cri De Cour by the young middle class over being locked out of the American Dream of home ownership. Abundance is an extension into trying to get other shit done. It all seems like a very middle class project that may not resonate with folks down the economic ladder. Seems like politics today requires hate and fear to get traction.

Expand full comment
Buzen's avatar

When housing supply increases, all rents go down (see Seattle, Austin and most recently Jersey City) which helps renters, not only middle class home owners. And when housing supply increases, and lowers prices in economically strong cities, more people, of all income and job levels, can move to that city, increasing their own income and the GDP of the city.

Expand full comment
unam's avatar

im at dying at plane crash age.... ouch

Expand full comment
Aaron's avatar

+1 to un-paywalling the critique of Sandeep's Abundance review. I've seen his review referenced multiple times, so it would be useful to have a short hand to reference.

Expand full comment
Len Layton's avatar

Well one thing we learned today is that at least one of the authors of “Abundance” is staggeringly ignorant of macroeconomics and the role of an independent central bank.

Expand full comment
Richard Weldon's avatar

In commenting on the discussion of mechanisms to finance housing, monetary policy is possibly the worst way to manage disequilibria in the real economy, given its infamous long and variable lags. Managing the real economy by trying to pump money through the financial sector is like trying to manage your diet by burning down your local supermarket. The financial sector is often more of a barrier than a bridge to the real economy, and monetary policy is a crude instrument that works by damaging the economy that it is being used to fix. A negative sales tax is a much more direct way of injecting money into the demand stream than is fiddling around with interest rates and the money supply. We need mechanisms that directly address the specific nature of the shocks we are trying to manage. A negative sales tax (or value-added tax) would affect the real economy immediately and could be precisely targeted by sector when desirable. Of course, a sales tax could be either positive or negative depending on the stage in the business cycle being addressed. This kind of mechanism would provide monetary and fiscal authorities much greater leeway to attack other problems, such as housing. It should be noted that although a positive sales tax is regressive, a negative sales tax would be highly progressive.

Expand full comment
GoodGovernanceMatters's avatar

What would Scott Sumner say...

Expand full comment
mathew's avatar

Other countries keep their costs so low through a variety of methods. The primary method is rationing.

Also they tend to pay healthcare professionals a lot less.

I believe a doctor in the UK tends to average at about $170k a year, a doctor in the US about $260k a year.

That and the US has a lot more chronic health problems because of higher obesity rates. So that drives a lot of spending as well.

I suspect heroic end of life care might be a factor as well, but I'm not sure.

Expand full comment
mathew's avatar

Oh and Medicaid tends to pay below cost. So be careful with that as well.

Expand full comment
mathew's avatar

Regarding the inflation discussion. Inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods and services yes? Which is exactly the problem we saw after COVID tremendous amounts of fiscal stimulus and constrained supply chains.

One solution is to reduce the monetary supply (or fiscal stimulus) which pulls money from the economy and drives up interest rates.

The other is to increase the supply of goods and services. So doing something like getting rid of burdensome red tape and excessive fees would stimulate housing production without effecting interest rates.

All that being said we should have pulled back unspent fiscal stimulus once we realized inflation was a problem. That would have solved the inflation problem while also helping the debt problem.

Getting rid of the red tape is pretty much always a good idea. Let's produce more goods and services that people want to consume, economic growth is good.

Expand full comment
Ryan Dudzinski's avatar

Here is the latest anti-Abundance piece. You know, Noah, you should go on Nathan Robinson's Current Affairs podcast. That would make for a deeply entertaining and informative episode, I think.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/abandon-abundance

Expand full comment
Buzen's avatar

That was a boring standard Bernie-bro/Mamdani-stan, high taxes, redistribution left populist degrowth socialist critique, based only on the fact that the book points out how stupid all those leftist policies are and doesn’t blame everything on corporations.

Expand full comment
Ryan Dudzinski's avatar

Yeah, pretty much. I just like that Noah usually cites concrete examples disproving each point when he responds to that kind of thing. I don’t have the capacity nor the expertise to do so, myself.

I generally like Nathan Robinson and Current Affairs, and I myself am a progressive, but I get deeply annoyed by the types of leftist crap you’re referring to. It fucks up my side of the aisle!

Expand full comment
mike harper's avatar

I don't exactly know why but "Abundance" sort of sticks in my craw. Maybe because I live in what the median American would consider abundance. From my idle reading of comments on abundance I think I know what is desired. I guess I should read words from the author's mouth.

Expand full comment