Paul Krugman's column today is about California. He writes:
I'm not suggesting everything in California is just fine. Unemployment — especially long-term unemployment — remains very high. California's longer-term economic growth has slowed, too, mainly because the state's limited supply of buildable land means high housing prices, bringing an era of rapid population growth to an end. (Did you know that metropolitan Los Angeles has a higher population density than metropolitan New York?) Last but not least, decades of political paralysis have degraded the state's once-superb public education system. So there are plenty of problems.
The point, however, is that these problems bear no resemblance to the death-by-liberalism story line the California-bashers keep peddling. California isn't a state in which liberals have run wild; it's a state where a liberal majority has been effectively hamstrung by a fanatical conservative minority that, thanks to supermajority rules, has been able to block effective policy-making.
Hmmm. Why is it that California, the third-largest state by land area, has a "limited supply of buildable land"? Could it be that that same "liberal majority" that Professor Krugman insists is "hamstrung" has imposed so many environmental and other restrictions on builders? Thomas Sowell relates the story of a San Mateo, Calif., housing development whose approval was contingent on the builders turning over to local authorities 12 acres for a park, contributing $350,000 for public art, and selling about 15% of the homes below their market value. Between the California Coastal Commission and ordinances that protect ridge lines and live oaks, buildable land is limited. One may debate the merits of these policies. I'm not saying they should all be repealed and all of California should be paved over and turned into high-rise apartment buildings. But it's just out of touch for Professor Krugman to claim, as he does, that liberal policies have nothing to do with high housing prices in California.
Likewise, the cities of Santa Monica and San Francisco, California both suffer from the effects of rent control laws that limit rent increases. Intended to make housing more affordable, these laws wind up making it more expensive overall, in part by encouraging people to stay in rental apartments that are larger than they would otherwise pay for. As recently as his 2007 book Conscience of a Liberal, Professor Krugman conceded that Milton Friedman had "considerable justification" for describing rent control as "evil." Yet when it comes to "high housing prices" in California, Professor Krugman apparently doesn't find the left-wing policy of rent control worthy of mention, because it undermines his tale of a liberal majority "hamstrung by a fanatical conservative minority."