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Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

> Supply&demand does work.

Works for whom?

Those in a free market where prices aren't set by the government.

So you're saying that it's hypothetically everyone then? I say hypothetically because the U.S. is only partially a free market (i.e., not a free market), and so that makes any appeal to the "free market" hold little water.

In what way is the increasing ratio of rent to income working for renters?

Prices are set by the government via zoning laws, sky high prices for new land and importing millions of new people like in Europe.

Where those in power comfortably sit in inherited properties and wonder why the plebs does not eat cake.

I believe in the free market, but the housing market is not free.

> Prices are set by the government via zoning laws

Zoning laws are not price fixing. Practically every dwelling in a zone has a different price on it, because of supply&demand.

Zoning laws have a restrictive effect on supply, which in turn has an effect on prices.

That's quite different from setting the prices.

The government is a monopolist land owner that hands out new land at prices designed to please existing private land owners and lobbyists. This is as far removed from a free market as an absolutist monarchy.

For everybody. Like any other physical law of nature.

That's not a fact. This is an interesting take on the "laws" of a classical economy[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsUS3ynhAKY&feature=emb_logo

Of course it is a fact, it is one of the most basic laws of nature. It can be observed in interactions of other biological species not only ours. It would still hold if there were no humans. Claiming otherwise is like denying gravity.

The “law” of supply and demand doesn’t even work across all categories of the economy, so it’s not at all like the law of gravity.

https://www.businessinsider.com/supply-and-demand-model-of-l...

You are citing a political opinion from a newspaper to prove somehow supply and demand is not a natural law. What is next, an article in Astrology Today arguing 1 + 1 != 2.

A model working and producing a personally.desired outcome are two separate things.

The assumption of a labor shortage because of low nominal unemployment is incorrect - the gig economy is thin margin as it is even with poor pay. It utilizes the previously "idle" labor in a marginal business model but without sufficient demand in other sectors it only provides a low floor.

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