Talk:Rent regulation/Archives/2015

opposition to rent control is mainstream

I like the edit of my addition, it's much clearer now, thank you. But the dislike of rent control is mainstream, and it has been for at least twenty years, from right-leaning to left-leaning, from Monetarists to Keynesians. Milton Friedman, Paul Krugman, Gregory Mankiw, even Gunnar Myrdal (who was socialist). There are several Nobel Laureates who are against rent control, and none are for it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.208.188.68 (talk) 21:53, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

(Wait, why is this talk page under Rent regulation, but the page I edited called Rent control?) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.208.188.68 (talk) 22:07, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

The only cited author who is for rent control is Arnott, and in his own articles he says that most economists oppose rent control, and have for a long time. He never says that support for rent control is mainstream, just that he thinks it deserves another look, given the more sophisticated tools we have. Specifically,

"Rent control has been presented to fifty years of economics students as an object lesson in bad policy." [1]

"Economists have been virtually unanimous in their opposition to rent control." [2]

He does say that he believes would be a ground-swell of younger economists who do support rent control, but that article was written in 1995, and that swell has never materialized. Mainstream economists are still against rent control.

(As an added note, Professor Timothy Taylor is the managing editor of the journal that published Arnott's 1995 article, and he is also against rent control.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.218.5.72 (talk • contribs)

Sure, many/most economists are against rent control, but the system is popular with enough voters and enough city planners to have it remain in force in various cities. The point I'm making is that economists are not the deciding factor.

When I look at economist arguments against rent control I immediately notice that they don't put a value on neighborhood stability or the quality of life for the residents. That is most likely why their rent control calculations are just exercises in futility, with virtually no effect on public policy. Binksternet (talk) 00:53, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

And, when I saw this edit on Rent control I was ready to eat crow and admit that there is mainstream opposition to rent control. Yet it took only a momentary search to identify the sources cited as being highly partisan, as I added here. I find it telling that when you try to find a source supporting the "most economists oppose rent control" statement, you are forced to cite free market think tanks and outspoken Austrian school economists.

For me the bottom line is that rent control/regulation is in fact highly politicized. The only ones claiming there is "scientific" evidence here are themselves highly politicized actors. Which is fine. Wikipedia just needs to frame their political opinions as political opinions. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 01:05, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

@Binksternet: You're right, rent control is ridiculously popular among people and politicians, and the article as a whole should reflect that. But in the theory section, I think it should be made clear that economists, specifically, are broadly opposed to the notion.

@Bratland: It is an incredibly politicized issue. But whether we think that most economists are politically biased (which they undoubtedly are) or not, I don't think that's for us to judge. There is a broad consensus among economists that rent control is harmful. This point of view is shared by even Keynesian, saltwater-economists like Mankiw and Krugman, and even the Nobel laureate socialist-democrat Myrdal.

I think that the statement is a good one, but let me know what you all think. "Most economists have historically been opposed to rent control, however most people and their elected politicians are in favor of them, and rent control remains a popular and common law." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.218.5.72 (talk) 01:32, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

So Krugman is about the middle of the political spectrum, so that -- if verified -- establishes that opposition to rent control runs all the way from the right to the middle of the economic spectrum. Actual leftist economists are not counted, for some reason. Missing here: where is the actual citation from Paul Krugman? I'd like to know whether he criticized a particular rent control/regulation scheme, or condemned all possible such schemes as an Austrian school economist would likely do. We only have rightist sources claiming Krugman holds such and such position. Same for Myrdal et. al. Besides citations of Krugman, Myrdal, etc, the second thing we are missing is the full methodology for how "economists" were polled. At best, I'm seeing some surveys of a few United States or English speaking economists in a narrow subset of the field. Not a rigorous survey of all economists. How is "economist" defined? How would you carry out such a survey?

I'd just drop it. Economics is not climate science. What's the point of trying to take a chaotic, diverse field and use a lot of hand waving to coax a "consensus" view out of it? No such consensus view exists. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:32, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

To be fair, Krugman says that rent control is bad, but he does not tell us what factors he set as having high value (probably not neighborhood stability), and he also says that economists are unimportant participants in the rent control question. I hold that this article about rent control should tell the reader what are the various opinions of economists, but briefly. The article should not be primarily a diatribe against rent control using arguments from economists. The proper balance will be achieved if some outstanding positions are mentioned, especially ones identified as widely held by economists of many stripes.

A consensus view isn't about what's most balanced on some political spectrum, it's just about what a vast majority thinks. I don't think we should be jumping into the waters of judging polls based on their methodology, that's getting into original research, and is really not what Wikipedia is about. Can anyone name economists who are notable in some manner and think rent control is a good thing? Are there any recipients of Clark medals or Nobels who think so? Even the one who is given an entire paragraph in this article said that economist opposition to rent control is virtually unanimous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.208.188.68 (talk) 18:42, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

POV fork

There's an obvious issue here between the article rent regulation ant rent control. For what I see, at one point there was a disagreement about the article's name, someone blanked an article instead of moving it and, even if a redirect was put in place, over time it was filled up again with content.

Rent control also lacks talk page (Talk:Rent control) and instead redirects here.

It seems to me that a disagreement over title led to a WP:POVFORK, with the argument that rent control are laws affecting only the price of renting while rent regulation has a wider scope. Can anyone provide sources for this? --Langus (t) 21:12, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

 Done Rent control redirected here. --Langus ^TxT 04:41, 8 May 2015 (UTC)