Affordability Tradeoffs – Food for Thought

“Virtually anything can be made more affordable in isolation, simply by transferring resources to it from elsewhere in the economy” -Thomas Sowell (American economist and social theorist)

Three of the primary things Bernie Sanders, an American presidential candidate, is trying to make more affordable are housing college, health insurance. Has anybody stopped to ask, what will happen to the economy three steps down the line if his policies were to be enacted? Thomas Sowell believes that transferring extensive resources from other activities to subsidize an exorbitant luxury makes the country poorer as a whole.

Medicare for all is estimated to cost between 2.8-3.2 trillion U.S. dollars per year. This is an exorbitant luxury. Housing for all is estimated to cost 2.5 trillion dollars. This is an exorbitant luxury. College for All would cost 70 billion per year from the state and national governments per year. This doesn’t mention his cancel all student debt plan (student debt in the united states is currently 1.6 trillion dollars. This is an exorbitant luxury.

Bernie Sanders’ plan fails to recognize tradeoffs and opportunity costs. Price …

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More families unable to afford homes in Dublin

The Dublin City Councillors agreed to tightly restrict eligibility to qualify for the affordable housing scheme. Thus, fewer families will be able to buy social housing in Dublin.

The Dublin City Council is seeking developers for 400 new homes on three different sites. These homes will be offered for sale to qualifying low and middle income workers. The starting price will be from $116,000. New apartments and homes amounting to 370 new units in Ballyum and Ballyfermont will be the first of several thousand affordable homes in all of Dublin, Fingal and Dun Laoghaire.  The scheme of priority has been approved by councillors by the four local authorities. The scheme determines how prospective buyers will be chosen.

Priority applicants have been defined as those living in the council area for at least 12 month will be the first to chose the newly available homes. The remaining homes will be offered to applicants with children in education in a set distance of the property. Any remaining homes will then be available to those who have a household member with a job …

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Mark to Market valuations.

This is an exerpt of Steve Forbes talking about mark to market valuations and some of his feelings on the markets as well as where we are set to go from here. He makes the argument that mark to market is a bad idea and that we should use traditional methods of cost & depreciation because the market skews valuations to strongly at a time like this.

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