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Texas has been the single largest beneficiary of California’s housing crisis. And that is, in part, because Texas is California’s mirror image on housing. The Austin metro area led the nation in housing permits in 2022, permitting 18 new homes for every 1,000 residents. Los Angeles’s and San Francisco’s metro areas permitted only 2.5 units per 1,000 residents.
And it is not even surprising that cities often choose to limit the forms of housing, or even the amount of housing, that can be built nearby. After all, if you already own a home, scarcity makes the asset you own all the more valuable.
does it make sense to be asking for special air filtration systems for developments near freeways when the alternative, for many of the would-be residents, is a tent beneath the freeway?
Elon Musk is now a vociferous critic of progressive policy. But he has also been a beneficiary of it. In 2010, when Tesla needed cash to launch its first family-friendly sedan, the Model S, the company received a $465 million loan from the Obama administration Department of Energy.17 His rocket-launching company, SpaceX, has received billions of dollars from NASA under Democratic and Republican
The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, however, decimated the solar revolution in America. Driven by a conservative ideology that favored free markets and limited government intervention, Reagan dismantled much of the solar infrastructure built up over the previous decade. For secretary of energy, he appointed James Edwards, a dentist with no expertise or interest in developing nascent energy technology.26 Solar R&D spending under Reagan fell by over 60 percent his first year in office.27 Some of the dismantling was painfully literal: in 1986, Reagan removed the solar hot-water panels
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Reagan’s election was the most important factor in the slowdown of US solar development, according to Nemet.28 His conservative revolution coincided with a huge drop in gasoline prices, as Saudi Arabia flooded the market with cheap oil in the 1980s. Consumers embraced gas-guzzling SUVs,
In all, the US government spent less than $40 billion to develop, produce, and buy mRNA COVID vaccines.63 It might be one of the best bang-for-buck policies in US history. COVID vaccines prevented up to 20 million64 excess deaths worldwide, with several million of those saved lives directly attributable to the acceleration of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
The politics of scarcity can be seductive. When there is not enough to go around, we look with suspicion on anyone who might take what we have. In the 2024 election, JD Vance spoke often of the inadequacy of housing supply, which he wielded as a cudgel against immigrants.
Donald Trump sounded the same themes. Voters “cannot ignore the impact that the flood of 21 million illegal aliens has had on driving up housing costs,” he warned.9 Right-wing populism seeks power by closing doors, halting change, and venerating the businesses and dominance hierarchies of the past. Scarcity is its handmaiden.
Liberals might detest the language that Trump and Vance use to demonize immigrants. But blue America practices its own version of scarcity politics. Zoning regulations in liberal states and cities that restrict housing supply have increased costs far more than the recent influx of immigrants. These restrictions exacerbated an affordability crisis that was harnessed by the right. Thus, the mistakes of liberals contributed to the rise of illiberalism.
A difficulty that Biden and Harris had in trying to run on their record in 2024 was that few communities were yet seeing benefit from all this construction their policies were meant to spark. The infrastructure bill, for instance, included $7.5 billion to build a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations; by March 2024—more than two years after the bill passed—only seven new chargers were up and running.22
