Editors at National Review Online explain how Republicans can win the political contest over “affordability.”
“Affordability” may be today’s political buzzword, but the truth is that it is always a top political issue. When we talk about inflation, or unemployment, or GDP growth, what we are mostly concerned about is whether people can afford the things they need and want.
When someone in your life has trouble paying his bills, he may profit from advice about hard work and thrift. Maybe he should learn his way around the kitchen. But mistakes on his part do not erase valid complaints about an economy and government that make paying those bills harder; economizing by households is not a substitute for better policies; and political parties and movements cannot set themselves up as the voters’ tutors.
Conservatives and libertarians, more than anyone else, should understand all the ways modern government makes it harder to make ends meet. They should share and express the voters’ anger, and try to direct it toward constructive channels rather than the dead ends of big-government liberalism or, worse, “democratic socialism.”
If sticker prices are high, that is in part because the Federal Reserve has expanded the money supply too much during the last six years, and has been reluctant to admit or correct its mistakes. The Fed is not going to exercise so much monetary restraint that the price level falls, but it ought to take its inflation target more seriously than it has done. Conservatives ought to insist on it — and write into law a tighter mandate for the central bank to produce the macroeconomic stability that is the Fed’s only justification for existing in the first place.
The high cost of housing, particularly in economically booming regions of the country, is a significant challenge for young people starting their working lives and thinking about starting families. The chief culprit is overregulation via zoning, building codes, and rent controls, particularly in some deep-blue jurisdictions.
