{"id":78066,"date":"2025-12-02T11:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T11:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/78066\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T11:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T11:35:07","slug":"california-passes-on-abundance-jon-miltimore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/78066\/","title":{"rendered":"California Passes on Abundance \u2013 Jon Miltimore"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In California, and on the left wing of the political spectrum, there has been a lot of chatter about abundance, the theme (and title) of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson\u2019s bestselling new book<\/a>. The book\u2014praised by Governor Gavin Newsom\u2014argues that progressives have been hurt by \u201cwell-intentioned<\/a>\u201d politicians with \u201cblind spots\u201d on economic issues like housing, especially in big cities where Democrats have embraced \u201cscarcity politics\u201d and heavy regulation.<\/p>\n

Savvy observers such as Nate Silver have noted that Abundance, published after Democrats\u2019 historic losses in 2024, was<\/a> \u201ccarefully calibrated to persuade insiders\u201d that progressives have been hurting themselves with heavy-handed economic policies that are doing more harm than good, particularly in US cities where progressives dominate the political scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alas, it seems that many Californians didn\u2019t get the memo (much like New Yorkers). One week after voters in the Big Apple elected Zohran Mamdani mayor, the city council of Los Angeles took its own leftward lurch, voting<\/a> by a 12\u20132 margin to ramp up the city\u2019s rent control law.<\/p>\n

Under the change, which was supported by LA Mayor Karen Bass, most Los Angeles landlords covered by the city\u2019s rent-control system\u2014about 75 percent of all rentals\u2014will face much tighter limits on what they can charge for rent. Instead of being able to raise rents by 3 to 8 percent a year, they\u2019ll now be restricted to increases of only 1 to 4 percent.<\/p>\n

Members of the council said the goal was to make rent affordable for the more than<\/a> 2 million people in the city\u2019s rental market. \u201cWhat we have before us right now is an opportunity to make L.A. more affordable,\u201d said<\/a> City Councilmember Nithya Raman, another supporter of the measure. \u201cBecause when people can afford to stay in Los Angeles this entire city thrives.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no question that the City of Angels is facing a housing crisis. She currently has a homeless population<\/a> of some 44,000. The average rent for all homes is $2,750, according to<\/a> Zillow\u2014nearly 40 percent higher than the national average. Unfortunately, the city\u2019s new rent-control policy is all but certain to make Los Angeles\u2019s housing crisis much worse.<\/p>\n

Economists don\u2019t always agree, but one thing virtually all economists agree on is that rent control doesn\u2019t make people better off. A 2024 University of Chicago survey<\/a> of 45 leading economists showed striking agreement on two core questions: None of the economists agreed that a 5 percent rent-control cap would substantially reduce income inequality, while just one said a rent cap would make middle-income Americans better off over the next decade.<\/p>\n

Rent control laws have many flaws, but the biggest is that they discourage the one thing that most effectively lowers housing prices: building new homes. By making it harder for landlords to turn a profit, rent control discourages the creation of new housing units (and disincentivizes maintenance<\/a> of current units). Whether you\u2019re looking at recent rent-control results in Europe<\/a> and the US or historic examples in Latin America<\/a>, the research tells a similar story: rent control makes housing affordability worse.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers in my home state of Minnesota recently discovered this. In 2021, voters in St. Paul, the state capital, approved<\/a> one of the toughest rent-control laws in the country. The following year, data showed building permits were down<\/a> 80 percent\u2014which prompted the city\u2019s Democratic mayor to urge the city council to amend the law. Two years later, the St. Paul city council quietly gutted<\/a> the measure.<\/p>\n

California doesn\u2019t need a complicated housing bill or a new stack of regulatory \u201csolutions.\u201d It simply needs to start respecting property rights again.<\/p>\n

A simple glance at Los Angeles\u2019s housing stock reveals the city\u2019s real problem. Los Angeles has seen a steady decline<\/a> in residential property permits in recent years, which largely stems from the city\u2019s four-year \u201crent freeze\u201d and aggressive tenant-rights laws that make it extremely difficult to evict tenants, even if they\u2019re not paying<\/a> rent or are destroying property. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to tell investors, \u2018Let\u2019s take all this risk,\u2019 in a city that hates landlords and developers,\u201d developer John Gregorchuk told<\/a> Politico.<\/p>\n

If you doubt Gregorchuk, consider that earlier this year, California lawmakers rejected a proposal<\/a> to make it easier for property owners to remove squatters and trespassers. Many readers may not be familiar with California\u2019s squatting problem, but perusing local media coverage<\/a> reveals its scope and brazenness<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Online testimonials also abound. Benjamin Miller, the CEO of Fundrise, a company that operates in real estate and venture capital, recently described his experience of managing properties in Los Angeles. \u201cThe LA system is so insanely tenant friendly that a tenant has literally started bonfires in one of our unit living rooms and we still couldn\u2019t evict them,\u201d Miller wrote<\/a>. \u201cWe had tenants who hadn\u2019t paid rent in years. We had squatters who broke into the houses and dealt drugs from the house, and we couldn\u2019t evict them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Progressives like to talk about abundance, but most of them don\u2019t seem particularly interested in pursuing policies that lead to abundance. All too often it seems their real priority is preserving an ideological model of government-led solutions. The appearance of serving the \u201cpublic good\u201d outweighs actual public benefits, while their agenda conveniently serves entrenched interests\u2014unions, contractors, and bureaucracies. The phenomenon\u2014classic public choice<\/a> in action\u2014explains how you end up with<\/a> $80 billion high-speed rail projects that go nowhere and $1.7 million<\/a> public toilets.<\/p>\n

Americans of all political stripes would do well to remember that the path to prosperity isn\u2019t complicated. Adam Smith pointed out the formula centuries ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cLittle else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice,\u201d Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations<\/a>, \u201call the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last part of Smith\u2019s famous quote is often overlooked. His phrase \u201ctolerable administration of justice\u201d is admittedly vague, but it plainly includes basic property rights. At minimum, that means the freedom to sell one\u2019s property at a chosen price and the authority to remove those who trespass.<\/p>\n

California doesn\u2019t need a complicated housing bill or a new stack of regulatory \u201csolutions\u201d; it simply needs to start respecting property rights again. If you doubt this, consider how Argentina recently solved its own housing-affordability crisis. President Javier Milei didn\u2019t pass a high-profile five-point plan; he simply rescinded<\/a> the country\u2019s harmful rent-control law, which had disincentivized housing construction. The result was immediate<\/a>: the cost of housing fell roughly 40 percent, and the supply of available units surged by 180 percent.<\/p>\n

Many people, myself included, had hoped Klein and Thompson\u2019s book would be a wake-up call for Democrats, whose favorability hit historic lows<\/a> in 2025. With the Trump administration embracing its own command-and-control style of economics, there is an opening for an abundance and reform movement in the center or, as Klein has observed<\/a>, on the center-left.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If California is any indication, it unfortunately looks like progressives will chart a different course. Instead of choosing the abundance path\u2014removing regulatory barriers and protecting property rights\u2014leaders appear intent on doubling down on scarcity.<\/p>\n

This is an ominous sign. If progressives in blue states and America\u2019s largest cities remain hostile to property rights even as their cities fail, abundance will remain just a slogan\u2014and the costs will be high.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In California, and on the left wing of the political spectrum, there has been a lot of chatter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[24054,7,9,8,457,44951,44952],"class_list":["post-78066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-abundance","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-property-rights","tag-public-choice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}