Rent Contol: Open-and-Shut Case?

[Brad De Long]

>  > >To return to the original question, Seth, the conventional rent control
>>  >argument that Krugman parrots assumes that new construction will be
>>  >controlled.  But in actually existing schemes like SF and NY, it isn't.
>>
>>  It isn't *now*. But at some point in the future what was to us new
>>  construction will be old construction, and at some point in the
>>  future there is some chance that it will be brought under the
>>  rent-control umbrella...
>>
><snip>
>>
>>  Of course, this means that you *can't* solve the problem by removing
>>  rent control--because there remains a chance that some future
>>  election will bring in a city council that will reimpose it...
>>
>
>Follow this argument out, and the spectre of rent control will always be a
>problem even where it never existed because it someday might.  But this is
>a ghost of the original argument.  Now it's not the rent control that
>exists that's the problem, but the rent control that someday might, and
>which, by definition, can never be abolished.  And thus totally abolishing
>rent control can't fix it!  That's seems more like an argument for keeping
>it.  It's certainly no longer a ringing argument for deregulation.

Yep...