Dash of Calabash

Substitute Hawaii for Santa Barbara and nearly every aspect of this article from Reason’s Out of Control blog applies.

The reason Santa Barbara is experiencing shockingly high housing inflation and a commercial exodus of middle-class and non-retail business is not because of semantics. Its because Santa Barbara enacted policies that restricted housing supply and land development, driving prices up. Prices went up because land wasn’t available for development, and development regulations imposed higher
costs.

While jobs haven’t begun fleeing the state to any great degree yet, the younger population is beginning to. At some point rising housing prices will drive people and businesses away.

This observation is classic:

The Soviet Union and Cuba were not able to legislate away market dynamics, so we shouldn’t expect city and county councils in the U.S. to do it either. Policies that result in higher housing costs are simply not sustainable as urban development policy.

Somebody should tell our legislators in the Big Square building and Honolulu Hale.

Full article here.

John Stossel has a few things to saw about how competition would make schools better.

In 2001, Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby found that Milwaukee’s private school vouchers made the nearby public schools (which were competing for the same students) change. “[Public] school principals were allowed to have a lot more autonomy,” she said, “They counseled teachers out of teaching altogether who really weren’t performing or showing up on the job — they put in new back to basics curricula in some primary schools that really needed that so that reading skills and math skills would go up.” Test results at those public schools went up by 7.1 percent in math, 8.4 percent in science, and 3.0 percent in language. Scores went up in voucher schools, too.

Full article here.