Comments on: Can’t we just give up on trickle-down economics and replace it with BUILD-UP economics?

By: joe

joe — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 04:08:20 +0000

The post is correct in lay persons’ economics. What we have had since Clinton through Bush and Obama (Greenspan, Bernanke,Yellen) is a policy of pumping an asset bubble that will lead to a horrible bust.
As usual, working class people and middle class will pay the price through austerity, privatization of the commons, rape of pensions, etc.
Trickle down is a easy term that aligns with Chicago School Economics, Hayek, Milton Friedman…and the more general term ‘neo liberalism’.
Meaning that liberating all nation states of control over their own economies, such as tariffs to protect manufacturing, and small agriculture somehow results in ‘wealth’ trickling down. The more general result, is a race to the bottom. Manufacturing is subsidized in many ways to put parts together in near slave labor states. And the platforms of assembly are far away from first world labor.
Meaning that basically free loans to the top 10% creates good jobs. And creates affordable housing. No it doesn’t . And never has. We’ve never had affordable housing ‘given to us’ in boom times. By rich people. And now, the fed subsidies for housing has one tenth of what it was in the 70′s. Clinton cut it, Bush cut, and Obama cut it. Good luck in thinking that a city can make up that missing hundreds of millions in subsidies.
Of course, anyone that knows any history of capitalism knows this idea of pumping nearly ‘free’ money to the top creates jobs, is bunk. Even Nixon and the entire republican party of the 60′s knew this was bunk.
Ayn Rand called Nixon a ‘socialist’.
And this grip of fairy tale economics ignores that all industrial capitalist countries built a middle class by !) 100 years of protectionist tariffs, 2) union organizing, often met with bloody backlash. 3) Keynesian economics after WW2….to save capitalism for the capitalists as FDR put it.
There is of course many streams of economic theory. As two beers pointed out, anyone that says different is an idiot.
What does this have to do with housing? Well, 12 trillion dollars was pumped to the Too Big to Fail, by our federal reserve. 2 Trillion dollars of real estate here in the USA has been bought by Chinese. Trillions more by Canadians, Russians, Sovergn Wealth Funds.etc.
Since it seems most people are still not paying attention even after the 2009 global bust, lets put it this way. Nothing has changed, and we are in the biggest asset bubble in history. The chinese central bank, the EU bank and our bank has pumped trillions of money into the market. WE are fucked. Only the speculators are getting off.
But I guess I have to forgive that no one sees the crash, since even the activist blogs in the east bay and here, don’t even raise the issue.
How strange. after 2009, that people still trust the same experts and believe the same sources…….See you in a year or so. God this is going to suck and we are fucked. Don’t laugh at greece.
As the head of Citibank said in 2008 “well, we have to keep dancing as long as the fat lady sings.”

By: Blog-level intelligense

Blog-level intelligense — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 22:05:28 +0000

The fuck?

By: two beers

two beers — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 21:20:04 +0000

Supply side economic policy has its place in certain market conditions. There are grave consequences to implementing supply side policy when an economy suffers from demand deficiency (which can usually be traced to too few and/or too low-paying jobs). Doing so results in wild speculation leading to huge, increasingly frequent, and highly unstable asset bubbles.

Sound familiar?

By: two beers

two beers — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 21:14:45 +0000

No one’s trying to constrain housing supply. Some people are pushing back against the build!build!build! luxury condo frenzy that is causing all non-rent-controlled housing in SF to go through the roof. There is a big difference between “constraining housing supply” and trying to rein in an out-of-control luxury development bubble the destructive consequences of which are rending the social fabric of the city and which will be felt forever after.

By: Truth

Truth — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 18:38:54 +0000

19th that is.

By: Truth

Truth — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 18:37:38 +0000

If you studied economics in the 9th century, you might believe that supply creates demand, but that’s been pretty heavily refuted. Although it is favored by the supply-side/trickle-down/’makers and takers’ bunch.

By: BabaBooey

BabaBooey — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 18:36:56 +0000

What a disingenous pandering fool Campos is. You do realize that building market rate homes also provides BMR homes, right? Trying to conflate this with reaganomics is preposterous.

By: two beers

two beers — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 17:09:49 +0000

Tu quoque logical fallacy.

Always the sign of a disingenuous party.

Thanks for playing.

By: two beers

two beers — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 17:08:10 +0000

Thanks for proving my point. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

By: Pacific Standard Simon

Pacific Standard Simon — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 05:34:53 +0000

And to think, Thomas Carlyle called economics “the dismal science”… Not here!

By: Tom in SFCA

Tom in SFCA — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 04:43:37 +0000

Nonsense. There are not “many theories” about the relationship among supply, demand, and prices. Some people want their wishes to come true by themselves just because. That is not a “theory”. That is narcissism.

By: Grizzled Mission

Grizzled Mission — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 21:05:42 +0000

Yes, a small number. 75% of renters.

By: Leary

Leary — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 20:59:43 +0000

“but it’s doing exactly what it was intended to – keeping people from being displaced.”

… the tradeoff being that no one can ever dream of moving to here, or leaving and moving back, or even moving _within_ the neighborhood to better fit new life circumstances. Especially when those same rent controlled tenants fight to kill off all new housing that might otherwise make these things possible.

So, yes, it does an excellent job of helping a small number of people at many others’ expense.

By: Leary

Leary — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 20:28:01 +0000

It’s not a matter of it being hard to understand; it’s a matter of it being absolute bullshit. You don’t think well-off tech people are buying up old Mission SFHs? Good Lord, what Mission do you live in, anyways?

By: one

one — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 20:12:31 +0000

ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY